


Mix Tape I + II

by Kokolo, mugsandpugs



Series: Mix Tape [1]
Category: X-Men Evolution
Genre: Betaed, Child Abuse, Childhood Friends, Fairy Tale Elements, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up Together, In this house we love and support Kitty Pryde, M/M, Mutant Powers, Original Character(s), Slow Burn, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-05-24 00:46:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 58,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14944463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kokolo/pseuds/Kokolo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mugsandpugs/pseuds/mugsandpugs
Summary: Part I and Part II of Mix Tape -- an AU where Pietro, age 12, is abandoned to a cruel foster family in Deerfield, Illinois. There he meets and befriends human children Lance Alvers and Kitty Pryde. No matter how much he may love them, he knows he wont be able to keep them when Magneto returns... But as they grow, he realizes they may not be as human as he originally suspected. How will they become tangled in the imminent mutant revolution? (Slowest of slow burns; endgame Pietro/Lance.)





	1. Part One: Nosy Parker

**Mix Tape**

**Part One**

  ****

  _God forgive your unborn sons;_  
_I hope they don't end up like me._  
_I drag my mind through streets of shame,_  
_Blame myself, forgive the game.  
__That's how we deal with boys like me._

 Two Gallants, Despite What You've Been Told

  
жж  
  
_April 1998_

Ms. Jacobs of Deerfield Public Middle School considered herself something of a miracle worker, although in truth she only, unintentionally and unknowingly, worked a single miracle in her long career. Believing herself to have true insight into the minds of children, she was what her eye-rolling coworkers might call a ‘nosy parker’.

Still, one miracle per lifetime is more than the national average can claim, and hers was this: Bringing two foiling forces together and changing both of their lives forever.

In the very back of her homeroom class lurked Deerfield’s problem child, surly and unkept and ever-bruised, rumor dogging his every footstep alongside all the dirt as he trudged his reluctant path from one grade to the next with all the temerity of a ticking time bomb.

Front and center served as gilded throne for her newest transfer student, a fast-talking, whip-smart, impeccably groomed peacock of a child too verbose, cocky, and Other (in more ways than one) for the peasants that surrounded him to tolerate.

Aside from the sneering distaste of their classmates, the two had one other vital component in common, something coded into their genetics, wired into their brains, but this, they would not be made aware of for another three years. For the time being, what they shared was this: in addition to having been abandoned by those they trusted most, both boys were entirely unloved and without a friend in the world.

In other words, both children had been subjected to Illinois’ questionable foster system and were handling it as best they could.

Late April sunshine peeped through the classroom’s high windows on the day of Ms. Jacob’s first (and only) miracle, dazzling and tantalizing the thirty seventh-graders with whispers of summer and freedom. None were pleased when the upbeat woman who ruled their lives announced their final projects for the semester.

“This is the most fun time of year!” she said sincerely, clapping her hands together. The children did not look convinced. “It’s time for country reports!”

Those with older siblings who’d already been through the grade gave a flicker of recognition. Those who hadn’t stared drolly on. One didn’t appear to hear her at all.

“Mr. Alvers,” she said. The boy in the back, a hood over his scraggly dark hair, gave no reaction. Outwardly, she sighed. Inwardly, she felt a spark of a new idea taking place. “Mr. Alvers!”

Again, no response from the surly boy.

Front and center, her newest student let out a scoffing, disparaging noise, already accustomed to that name used in conjunction with scoldings and lectures. He looked at her plaintively as though to say, ‘aren’t you so glad you have _me_?’

Ms. Jacobs waded her way through the sea of chipped and graffitied desks until she stood before the silent skulker, and then gently pinched at the top of his hood, pulling it back. As she’d suspected, battered headphones were held in place over his ears.

The Alvers boy flinched, deep-set brown eyes wide in fear- and then anger- at the intrusion. She did not miss the way his body inched away from hers, or how his face turned, as though expecting a slap and working to minimize the damage. Her soft heart ached.

Wordlessly, she held out her palm.

The Alvers boy locked eyes with her, glaring her down; a gangly puppy pretending to be a wolf. They’d done this dance a time or twenty throughout the school year. It seemed that despite every second (and third, and fourth, and…) chance she gave him, he still went right back to his old ways.

“Lance,” she said quietly. “Come on. You know you’ll get it back. Don’t make me have to send you to the principal again.”

Mistrust etched every feature of his narrow, rectangular face as he slowly, reluctantly slipped the headphones off his ears, pulled the Walkman from the neck of his oversized hoodie, and passed both over. She depressed the red ‘stop’ button, and the tinny refrains of Nirvana- oh, he was in a _mood_ ; he only saved ‘Nevermind’ for bad days- fell silent.

The teacher made a show of going to her own desk in the back and using the key strung round her neck to lock the music player in a drawer. The snickering students likely assumed this was an attempt to thwart Lance from any reconnaissance attempts, but he knew the truth: she was protecting his most precious possession from being stolen.

He folded his arms on his desk and rested his face in them, but she could tell he was listening now as she returned to her original position and resumed speaking. She detailed their in-depth final project; the poster, the report; the model and flag and verbal presentation. Boredness transformed into horror for all but two students: Lance, who hadn’t woken up that day expecting any good news, and-

“Mr. Maximoff?”

The small boy with unusually colorless hair (she would have assumed he were some sort of albino, were it not for his olive-toned skin) lowered his hand and folded it primly in his lap, wide-set, ice-colored eyes sparking with intelligence. “How soon can we have this back to you?”

Several students rolled their eyes. There was a quiet, disgusted mutter of “ _show-off”_ somewhere near the back. Ms. Jacobs repressed a sigh of her own.

“I expect the project to take each group at least three weeks to complete.”

The boy’s thin mouth went to lemons at the sentence. She knew he disliked working with groups more than anything else, preferring instead to do impeccable work on his own and then lord its superiority over all.

There was a general improvement to the mood in the room at the thought of splitting the work, but scowls darkened brows once again as she referred to a ‘list’ (really just a blank sheet of paper) and began calling out names and countries.

“Adams and Jones? You’ll be working on Zimbabwe. O’Hare and Pryde? You’ll have China.”

And then, the miracle: “Alvers and Maximoff? You’ll have Ger-”

The rest of her sentence was drowned out by a single protesting cry from the middle of the room. The Maximoff boy was looking at her as though she’d just kicked his cat and cancelled his birthday.

“ _Alvers_ ?! But he’s-” He seemed to realize that it wasn’t socially acceptable to publically, verbally thrash someone to their teacher, considered this for half a blink, and then ploughed on anyway: “He barely even comes to school! I’m supposed to base my final grade on _him_?!”

Feeling rather like the cat that’d caught the canary, Ms. Jacobs planted a hand on her skirted hip, cocked her head, and said firmly, “That’s something you’ll have to work out with your partner then, isn’t it Pietro?”

The boy crossed his arms and pouted as she repeated her interrupted sentence with some relish: “Lance and Pietro will be working on Germany together. Remember, everyone, grab the assignment sheet off my desk before you leave for the day! I expect to see a one-page draft of what you plan to do with your project by tomorrow.”

She continued to call out on-the-spot names and countries until all, for better or for worse, had resigned themselves to this fate. A glance at the clock revealed scant minutes before the final bell for the day rang. As usual, once it did, twenty-eight students stampeded eagerly out the doors with all the grace of a herd of water buffalo.

Two students remained.

Lance picked up the plastic grocery bag he used to carry his things and slunk to Ms. Jacobs desk, waiting silently by the drawer in which his Walkman resided. Pietro, arms still crossed, foot tapping anxiously, watched him like a mongoose might watch a snake.

Ms. Jacobs sighed, but obligingly retrieved the key from around her neck and went to reunite music with musician. She’d thought of keeping it longer, perhaps over a weekend to let the lesson really sink home, but had never had the heart to do it.

“Lance,” she told him, not unkindly, even as he avoided her eyes. “I know that you need your music. I do. But you can’t listen to it during class, do you understand? How can you expect to do well in school if you can’t hear me?”

He gave the tiniest of shrugs. His eyes became hungry as she pulled the boxy device out of the drawer, reached for it, then scowled as she held tight. At thirteen years old, he was almost as tall as she, though she’d never thought to be afraid of him. Despite his violent reputation and frequent suspensions for fighting, he’d never so much as raised his voice to her.

“Do your best on this project, okay?” she asked, and resisted the urge to call him something like ‘honey’ or ‘sweetheart.’ Some students responded well to endearments, but she instinctively knew that he would resent it. “I want you to end this year strong,” she said instead. _I have faith in you_ , she thought, knowing how dangerously low his grades were. He hadn’t yet had to repeat a year, but…

Seeing that he wouldn’t otherwise get what he wanted without some sort of response, he gave a quick nod of his head. She handed him both the Walkman and headphones _and_ the assignment sheet. He turned away from her the moment he’d clasped the thing securely, already working the headphones back over his ears, covering all with his hood.

Pietro’s eyes narrowed in annoyance when he saw the way Lance held the assignment sheet, crinkling the paper as he shoved both hands into his pockets and left without a word of acknowledgement. The smaller boy leapt to his feet, silver sneakers flashing as he grabbed his bookbag and raced after him. Speedy little thing; Lance had barely taken two steps when he was halted by a hand on his elbow.

Lance aggressively wrenched his arm fee and spun on the smaller boy, teeth bared in a snarl, and Ms. Jacobs paused, wondering if she’d made a mistake after all. To his credit, Pietro did not flinch at the ferocious display.

“Don’t touch me. Ever.” Lance said, the first words he’d spoken all day.

“Don’t ruin my project,” Pietro retorted fearlessly, pointy chin jutting in defiance.

Lance snorted, withdrew the crumpled paper from his pocket, and thrust it in Pietro’s general direction. “Be my guest.”

Pietro snatched it from his hand, trying to smooth it out before sliding it into one of his notebooks, and then let out an irritable squawk when Lance pushed past him and strode out the door. He walked with a wide stance; legs apart, shoulders squared; trying to maximize the space he took up and forcing others to step to the sides.

“Get back here!” Pietro demanded, chasing after the other boy. “We still have to plan--”

His indignant voice faded with distance, and Ms. Jacobs shook her head, sitting back at her desk to begin grading quizzes, thinking of magnets, hoping that opposites really might attract.

If anyone needed a friend, it was those two.


	2. Evolved

Pietro Maximoff was extraordinary; miraculous; evolved; and he _knew_ it. Father had told him so, and Father knew everything. So why fate had reduced him into arguing with, threatening, and finally bribing some slacker into doing just a quarter of the work was both infuriating and beyond him.

He’d kept up with Alvers’ large strides for several yards of dirt road already, feeling more and more like a yappy dog nipping at the jerk’s heels as he did so. It was like yelling at a boulder. He hadn’t yet dared reach for him again- he’d seen the end results of Alvers pounding on other kids- but he was starting to consider it.

Finally, in pure, hair-pulling frustration, he demanded, “What do you _want_?!”

At last, a reaction. He felt a warm sense of surety fill him as brown eyes flicked his way. He hated being ignored  perhaps more than anything else in the world. It made him start to doubt whether he was even real anymore. He pressed on: “You’ve got to want something, so what is it? If you do your work, I’ll get it for you. Within reason.”

“Batteries.”

Alvers’ voice was always a little raspy, as though he’d recently been smoking… Or strangled. Maybe he was just thirsty. Pietro considered all three options in the time it took Lance to blink once. Sometimes it was hard to filter observances that mattered from those that didn’t. The world was a distracting place, for all its slowness. He recovered before Lance could again reopen his eyes from said blink.

“Okay. Batteries. How many and what kind?"  
  
“Double-A. As many as possible.”

Fine. Fair enough. “Consider it done. Now will you _please_ take this seriously? Ms. Jacobs notices when I do all the work myself.”

She’d threatened- gently, of course- to give him a less-than-perfect score if he did so again. Group work was more than just the end result, apparently, though he failed to see how it mattered. Anything less than perfect was unacceptable, if Pietro ever wanted Father to consider him worthy again.

Alvers’ face was as blank as slate- probably his brain, too. Everyone in this smelly cowpoke town was _dumb, dumb, dumb._ Pietro missed the hustle, bustle, noise and trouble of New York City with every fiber of his being.

It took Alvers forever and a day to reply, “I guess.”

His knuckles were scabbed and scarred as he raised a hand to push a chunk of uneven brown hair out of his face. Probably split them on some poor idiot’s teeth. Pietro hoped he wouldn’t be the next to get punched. He wasn’t allowed to fight with humans, not yet.

“So _ooo_ …” Pietro said leadingly, relaxing now that he saw he was getting his way after all. “The outline is due tomorrow. We should go work on that.”

Lance considered, long and slow. Pietro wondered if he were being deliberately obstinate, but there was no cunning on that angular face; just weariness. “Now?”

‘Now’ was probably the only convenient time Pietro would have for a while, between orchestra, basketball practice, chess club, and Big Brothers and Sisters. His foster parents tried to divert his excessive energy as much as possible, claiming it made him less obnoxious.

“You have something better to do?”

Lance sighed, thick brows falling flat. “No, I guess not. Your house?”

Though he tried to keep his expressions schooled, he felt the panicked expression briefly eclipse his features, and he fought it down mightily. Alvers? At ‘his’ house? Oh, oh no. Unacceptable. Disastrous, in so many ways. It could not happen.

“No,” he said, so firm and flat that Alvers could not argue.

“Well?!” the teen finally popped a felt pad from his ear, devoting only half his attention to his music. This in itself felt like a small victory. “We can’t go to _my_ place.”

Curiosity rose in the smaller boy, and he cocked his head, mouth parting to pepper Alvers with a thousand questions- _why not? Where do you live? Are your parents strict? Do you have siblings? Are they as mean as you?_  

With difficulty, he swallowed them back. It wasn’t relevant. “That’s what libraries are for.”

“I don’t have a card.”

“Lucky for you, I do.”

жж

Deerfield Public Library was, like most town buildings, an ancient red-brick that was once probably a church and definitely was not worth writing home about. If one’s heart was truly set on any specific books, one had better get ahold of the larger Chicago libraries on the phone and hope they’d be amicable to snail-mail.

However, it had tables, and it had atlases and encyclopedias, and that was all they needed for the moment.

Lance watched boredly as Pietro chose a table angled in perfect afternoon sunlight from the double windows, wiped it clean with a disinfectant cloth, greeted the librarian- _“Good afternoon, Marian.” “Well, good afternoon, Pietro!”-_ assembled the necessary books, and lined up an army of pens, pencils, and highlighters between them, neat as soldiers.

When he was satisfied, he looked up at his- ugh; shudder; cringe _\- partner._ His dark eyes were dull and uninterested; the badly concealed music could be tinnily overheard in this quiet space. The urge to wrench his hood back and snatch the plastic off his ratty hair was strong. Still, that wouldn’t go over well at all, and then he’d be right back to square one- or square _negative_ one, depending on how angry Alvers became.

He tried to force a smile. “So!” he said. “ _Germany_.”

“S’where you were born, right? Should be easy.”

This time, Pietro was unable to mask his surprise in time. Lance saw it, and relished in it.

"What," he smirked. "You thought I wasn't listening to your fancy little speech when you transferred?"

Pietro hadn't actually thought much about who was or wasn't listening; he'd only wanted to impress the teacher with his forwardness and comfort in public speaking. He would certainly not be some shy wallflower clamming up every time they were forced to present!

"Yes..." he replied slowly. If Lance knew this about him, there was no telling what else he might have picked up. He did a rapid mental scan of everything he'd said in class over the past school year for anything too incriminating.

Taking advantage of his uncustomary silence, Lance dragged the atlas out from under Pietro's arm, flipped carelessly through the pages, and stopped when he reached the one he wanted, looking the image over until he could point to ' _Munich_.' "Here, right?"

Munich. Yes. Where Pietro had been born, had spent the first happy years of his life. His Father, his mother, and also his…  
  
"We moved to New York when I was six," he said in a tone that offered no room for interjection. "I haven't been back since."

He tugged the atlas onto his side of the table, regaining control of his face as he did his environment.

"Why can't you just ask your parents about Germany then? Use that for the project?" Lance shrugged, his lazy drawl stating that it didn't much matter to him either way.

 _Oh, if only._ "My foster parents were born and raised in the states," he said cooly, and offered no more information. This sparked the second real flash of interest in Lance's eyes since that promise of the AA batteries.

Pietro braced himself for more questions, questions with an edge, questions that _hurt_ \- (so why don't your real parents want you no more, huh, pretty boy?)- but they didn't come. Instead, Lance shrugged again and held a dirty hand out for the 'G' encyclopedia. "Well, let's get this over with. I don't have all day."

Lance was far from the ideal partner. His handwriting was nothing short of atrocious. The only thing that prevented Pietro from erasing and rewriting his portions was the absolute certainty Ms. Jacobs would have of the other boy's involvement.

He was surly and rude, snatching books or writing implements as needed without asking, his words scrawling onto the page’s margins. When a piece of Pietro's gelled hair poked his cheek as they leaned in too close, Lance growled and pushed him away, but not as roughly as he could have done.

"Your antenna are stabbing me," he snapped irritably.

" _Ante_ -" Pietro was too appalled to even finish the word. He'd spent half his _life_ perfecting this hairstyle, only for it to be dragged so by some fashionless brute of a… _Ugh_.

Still, though. _Still_ . The work was rapidly completed, and Lance had done more than the promised quarter of it. More than _half_ , even, if Pietro was being honest with himself as he began to pack his things up again.

“Don’t forget,” Lance said, meeting his eyes with an intensity that sent a cold curl of alarm, of _warning_ , in his belly. Not all snakes were kind enough to announce their deadly-poison nature with rattles and bright colors, after all. “The batteries.”

Pietro held three fingers to his temple. “Scouts honor,” he vowed solemnly, and was more than a little relieved to see the back of the puzzling, sour boy as he left the library.

It was just 5:09 when Pietro himself made his exit. Five fifteen, that was when his foster mother returned from work and he was expected to be home finishing his chores. He considered, glanced around to see if anyone was watching, and then broke into a sprint.

When Pietro ran, the world around him slowed and stretched like taffy. Time was an illusion that held no bearing over him. Hyperfocused, he could see intricate details that anyone else might miss. The veins visible in a passerby’s fair skin; the pulse in a bird’s chest. He outraced them all. When he ran, his feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. When he ran, he was _free_.

He was at the local convenience store in less than a heartbeat, and he did not pause to gain his breath upon hitting the double-doors; no sense in letting any security cameras catch his visage. This wasn't, after all, his first rodeo.

He buzzed through when a shopper pushed the door open on her way out, ducking beneath her arm, and darted through shelves, cramming items down the neck of his shirt. Food; hairgel; school supplies.

The cashier behind the counter took an eternity to complete her yawn, eyes closing and then opening again in the time it took Pietro to gather all that he needed to survive another week with the Hennessy family.

He had only one more item to secure before it would be time to race home and hide the loot under a loose floorboard, though he resented the obligation. Up at the front of the store, he shoved a 24-pack of double-A batteries down his shirt, held between a box of granola bars, a notebook, and a six-pack of nutrition shakes. They sat cold and heavy against his bony chest.

Then the tiny thief left the store in a flurry of wind that caused shoppers to exclaim in wonder: a chilly draft, this late in spring? None but the dust were the wiser to his presence. Already half a dozen miles out of earshot, the sensor alarms above the doors began to shrill.

By the time the clock read 5:15, Pietro awaited his foster mother with chores complete and a pleasant smile on his face.


	3. From Dirt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for homophobic and anti-Romani bullying. (Two uses of the g-slur; one use of the f-slur.)

Lance's shoulders scrunched defensively to his ears at the loud thud of two small objects hitting his homeroom desk and rolling to the edge. Reflexively, his free hand shot out to catch whatever it was, and he found himself with a palmful of smooth, cool...

Batteries?

His gaze jerked up into Pietro's pointy, fine-boned face. The boy was odd-looking, alright; olive skin with piercing blue eyes and that shock of unnaturally white hair, coupled with a prominent nasal bridge that other kids laughingly referred to as a "Jew nose."

When he wasn't forcing that phony smile he always wore around adults, he looked rather severe, like an owl or some other predatory creature... Though the intimidation factor was mitigated somewhat by his tiny frame. He just didn't  _ look  _ like a Deerfield citizen, and he projected his Otherness like a badge of honor. It'd ruffled plenty of feathers since he'd moved into town.

Lance didn't much give a damn. Not about this weird kid or anyone else in town. Being the dark-skinned son of a Greek immigrant had painted a target on his back, and he was a Round Table boy besides. The chip on his shoulder, a mile wide, invited enough trouble without his drawing more attention to himself, thank you very much.

"You get two for now," Pietro said, a hand on his hip- Cripes; even his body language was weird. If he had half a brain, he'd learn to try and imitate the slouching and mumbling of those around him before the not-so-subtle sneers of ' _ gaaaay _ ' became any louder or more hostile. "Since you did so well yesterday. The rest will come later."

"Gee, thanks." Lance didn't bother trying to mask his sarcasm, or the hint of irritability that crept in. The little brat acting like he was king of the world always got under his skin. Still, free batteries- couldn't turn those down. He shoved them into his pocket and then glared at the small boy, willing him to go away.

Much to Lance’s horror, Pietro instead took the desk beside him, pale eyes darting around curiously. He smelled bright and brassy, like lemon cleaner. “I’ve never sat in the  _ back  _ before…”

“Well, no reason to start now,” Lance quickly discouraged. Pietro ignored him and began to prissily set up his things- three pens (red, black, blue) and two highlighters (yellow and orange). Looseleaf paper joined the utensils, and then a folder to put it all in… and their outline, scrawled thick with Lance’s own handwriting. He also set down a small pile of books relating to Germany. Did he really carry all that crap around every day? It was a miracle his back wasn’t hunched.

When Ms. Jacobs, vestigial coffee thermos in hand, entered the classroom, her sweeping honey eyes found the two in the back… and crinkled into a smile. Lance ducked his head so that he wouldn’t have to watch it form completely- it made him cringe. Whatever she was thinking just wasn’t true.

“Hi, everyone! How did your outlines go?”

The seated students muttered some less-than enthusiastic responses. Lance, as usual, remained silent. He curled in on his empty stomach (he’d steal someone’s lunchbox later, if he could) over his equally empty desk, resting his forehead in the soft nest of his hand-me-down hoodie. He mourned his music, but knew his Walkman had to stay in his pocket today… Knew that listening was, regrettably, imperative. It was better to have it off and with him than in some teacher's desk, even if said teacher had proven to be fairly decent as far as adults went.

Some hands reluctantly met the air, and outlines were discussed.

“Does anyone have any personal connections to their countries?” Ms. Jacobs, eager to continue this ebbing conversation and what she called ‘applied learning’ asked hopefully. “Maybe some family?”

It wasn't long before Pietro's hand was, predictably, stabbing the air; a small white flag demanding attention. "My mother is Roma," Pietro said, voice clear as a bell, and he launched into an informative diatribe about the Romani people and their travel through India and central Europe in the nineteenth century.

In the dull, eye-rolling silence that followed, one of the older boys blurted out with great disdain, "You mean  _ gypsies _ ?"

Pietro stiffened. Even from the corner of his eye, Lance saw his pointy little jaw clench. His voice was very terse when he argued, "The correct term is-"

The class was already chattering and snickering too much for his voice to break the din. It took Ms. Jacobs a while to regain control of the conversational flow.

Pietro deflated. Defeat was not a good look for him. Lance wondered if he'd finally learned to keep his mouth shut, but just minutes later he was sitting back up again, eyes bright. Maybe some people never learned.

He didn't seem to notice the dark looks being thrown his way when he rejoined the conversation, but Lance did. Lance always noticed more than anyone gave him credit for.

The problem was this: Lance knew that he was dirt, knew that he’d never rise above it. It was how he’d been born, and it was how he would die.  _ Pietro _ , on the other hand, made the continued mistake of thinking that he was worth something-- and soon, very soon, somebody would be forced to show him the error of his ways. Lance didn’t especially want to be around for the fallout.

жж

‘Soon’ came sooner than Lance had anticipated.

It was hard to work out the time to meet up and work on the Germany project as the days passed-- Lance may have all the free time in the world, but as Pietro liked to point out, he was too swamped with after-school activities to be readily available. The one time Lance offered to just go to his house and wait for his stupid chess club to end, he watched the wide-set eyes grow wider in alarm. Pietro’s house was off-limits, however nice his clothes and possessions might suggest his home life to be.

They’d managed to squeeze in plans to paint the poster together outside the gymnasium between the final bell ringing and when orchestra rehearsal began, but when Lance arrived there, the white-haired boy was nowhere to be seen. Time passed; Mr. Z, the short, portly orchestra instructor, even paused his set-up of chairs in the gymnasium to inquire what Lance was doing. He knew he made teachers nervous…

"Waiting for Maximoff," he reassured, though talking to adults- especially men-  _ especially  _ near-strangers- wasn't something that he particularly relished in.

"Pietro? I saw him by the bathrooms," Mr. Z jerked a thumb in the general direction of ‘outside’. "He was carrying some paint."

Lance mumbled his thanks and made to leave.

"You should pick up an instrument, Alvers," Mr. Z mused, and grinned at Lance's startled look. "You've got a musician's hands." He flexed his own stubby fingers to illustrate his point. "Talk to me sometime."

The Walkman in Lance's pocket suddenly felt very heavy as he hustled off outside and around the corner where the gym bathrooms resided. His face felt warm. There was just no way his secret aspirations were so transparent to strangers, were they?!

Outside the bathrooms, he saw a black viola case with a fox-shaped sticker bearing Pietro’s name, and a bag containing some tubes of paint… but no Pietro. He pushed the door open, but the stalls and urinals were empty. However, the back door, usually locked, was propped open by a large rock, and many muddy footprints covered the tiles there. Also visible were two lines sunk deep into the mud, like small feet planted in protest against being dragged away.

Lance clenched his jaw. He’d always had finely tuned instincts, and they were pooling like dread in his stomach just now. Something wasn’t right, and if he’d had to bet money on  _ what _ …

A small, far-off cry confirmed his suspicions. Going very still like a dog on the hunt, he carefully stripped off his hoodie, bundled his Walkman inside, and hid both in the pipes underneath the sinks before following the footsteps outside and into the woods that bordered the school.

The signs of student life- chewed gum; crumpled assignments- quickly gave way to pure nature, but this didn’t soothe Lance as it normally would. Now all of his energy was focused: he had a mission to complete, and his singleminded brain could think of nothing else until he’d done so.

He lost the trail as the ground became too hard for mudslicks, but found Pietro’s sky-blue bookbag tangled in some brush only a few steps in. His long legs and familiarity with these woods made quick ground, and when the trees thinned and more mud was visible again, he saw them.

Two eighth-graders had Pietro by the neck and underarms and were mercilessly forcing the back and top of his head into a mud slick like some perverse baptism. His legs, unteathetered, kicked and bucked like a frantic rabbit, seeking purchase and finding none.

He did not scream.

It was a bizarrely silent affair that spoke of ritual- or it would, were it not for the terror on the small boy's face.

As Lance crept closer, it became evident that this was not so silent after all; whines and whimpers peppered the grunts and heavy breathing. " _ Nein _ ," Pietro huffed, wrists straining in the larger boys' bruising grasps. And, " _ Vater _ ..."

The ceaseless, whirlwind kicking of helpless twiggy legs made Lance feel ill. It was clear this odd, annoying boy had little to no idea how to fight.

"Aw, you don't like it, gypsy fag?" one of the boys sneered, swiping the back of his muddied cheek with one hand before quickly returning it to Pietro's throat, dunking him more thoroughly. Pietro’s bucking reached a fever pitch when his nose was also forced into the mud. "We're just helping you out."

"Dyeing it back to your natural color," laughed the second bully. "A life lesson, city boy: dudes don't bleach their hair in Deerfield."

"Get his eyebrows too," suggested the former, and now Pietro did begin to squall as his face was tipped back harsher than ever. He gagged.

Lance saw red.

Oh he knew better, of course. A lifetime of beatings at the hands of bigger boys had taught him to choose his fights wisely, to engage only if the benefits outweighed the costs ten to one, and he didn’t even particularly  _ like _ this boy.

None of these factors figured here. This… This brutal unfairness  _ offended  _ him. He attacked without hesitation.

The element of surprise gave him some leeway. His fists flew with vigor and enthusiasm, his shouts all vowels and no sense. He dragged fingers into short wiry hair, wrenched a throat back, slammed knuckles into a temple, watched green eyes go from shocked to hazy.

The adrennaline of a fight, once it was kicked into full gear, was everything. Lance felt more alive than he had in months, and he laughed like a wild thing as his knees found and mashed soft kidneys, careful to bowl the bigger boy off of Pietro as he did so, gratified to hear the white-haired boy gasp for breath underneath.

"You like beating on little brats who can't fight back?!" Lance demanded, mouth twisted sideways in a feral smile.

The second boy recovered at last and, with a protest, threw himself into the scramble. "It's that Alvers punk!" he exclaimed, twisting a snarl of Lance's long hair around one wrist. Lance was too amped up to feel the stinging pain just yet, so he only laughed harder even as fists were driven into his chest and belly.

He would not win this fight, but he'd known that going in. He struggled against the weight on his back for as long as he was able, but when his arms gave out and his chest was forced into the mud slick, he turned to gasp into Pietro's wide-eyed face.

"Get out of here, dumbass!" he spat, and then muffled a scream when his arm, on the lines of an old injury, was popped out of socket. A foot flew back and caught him in the ribs.

Pietro stared at him in wordless shock for another moment, mud dripping, all the color bleached out of his heart-shaped face, before booking it for the treeline to save his own skin. Lance had to give him credit: the kid was  _ fast _ .

Once he was out of eyesight, Lance resumed struggling and managed to get in a few more good licks before he was grabbed by the back of the neck, his face plunged into the mud. Grit stung his eyes. He held out as long as he was able, but lack of oxygen started to make his moves sluggish; his limbs heavy and ineffective. His pulse pounding in his ears was the loudest sound in the world. Still he struggled not to black out: once you were unconscious, they could do anything to you. His fingernails clawed at muck.

Without warning, there were shouts. Hands grasped his waist, rolled him onto his back. A cotton sleeve wiped mud from his eyes. “Lance?!” a female voice demanded, and he shook his head, dislodging more muck from his ears as he gasped for breath.

“Hey, Ms. Jacobs,” he croaked at the sight of frizzy ginger hair, more relieved than he wished to let on. Over her shoulder he saw Mr. Z corralling the eighth graders back to the school, spitting furious as alley-cats. Sitting with his back to a tree was Pietro, knees to chest, hair drying into stiff brown spikes. He trembled uncontrollably… but he hadn’t abandoned Lance, after all.

“Are you alright?” Ms. Jacobs asked, helping Lance to sit up. The sickly grinding noise as he popped his shoulder back into place and rotated the cuff made her shudder.

In answer, Lance twisted his head to the side and spewed up a great mouthful of brown water.


	4. Aspirations

Out of everything to be embarrassed about, bunching his socks and underwear into his ball of clothing and handing the bundle through the cracked bathroom door to Alvers’ waiting hands should have been at the bottom of the list, but Pietro’s entire face felt red as a furnace under all the mud when he closed the door and stepped into the none-too-clean shower.

All things considered, he should just shut up and be grateful that Lance had allowed him to come to his boarding house at all. He’d been reluctant about the idea; so much so that Pietro had debated whether to break into a few homes along the way until he found an empty one to use _their_ amenities instead. It would have been closer; they’d had to squish their muddy way for _miles_ to the very edge of town by the train tracks.

The house in question was deceptively large and, from a distance, almost nice. It was only as they drew closer that he saw its state of disrepair; the graffiti; the exposed hunks of drywall. The scrubby yard full of trash and crushed beer-cans, and the vehicles crowded around the curb looking like many cars Frankensteined together. Shirtless men leaned over nearby apartment balconies and smoked; clashing music filled the streets. It was the sort of neighborhood the Hennessey's would never set foot in, and that was _before_ Pietro found himself stepping over discarded condoms and needles on the stoop.

It wasn’t until he saw the plaque above the door that read “Round Table Housing” that it hit him what- _who_ \- Lance Alvers really was. _A Round Table boy…_ Pietro had been threatened with this exact house upon arrival at the Hennessey's. It was still a threat they employed when his behavior was less than ideal. It was where boys were sent when they weren’t wanted; when they were too wild to foster… And it was where Pietro now washed the mud from his first fight as best he could.

It took multiple rinses until the water ran clear, and then he held still, watching the remaining bruises and scrapes on his skin close and fade as they healed. Now that all the drama was over, he felt distinctly embarrassed about the whole thing. He’d been so _useless_ …

But there was a towel and some clothes waiting for him on the sink, and he didn’t have all the time in the world, so he tried to push the cringing, shameful feelings aside for now.

Lance's t-shirt, some gray thing too old and faded and stretched for the original design to be apparent, slipped over Pietro's narrow shoulders, falling down his arm. He pulled the drawstring of the pajama bottoms as tight as it would go and still had to hold onto one hip to keep them from falling as he padded across the dirty hallway.

The place seemed to be packed to the brim with boys ranging from age five to twenty. They lounged; squabbled; sauntered. Every last one of them brought to mind images of a lion pride: cohesive and dangerous, eyes hungry as they blatantly watched him. They spoke a language with their bodies that Pietro had never, _would_ never understand, and it made him feel more than a little skittish. Unlike Lance, each of these Round Table boys sported a buzz-cut.

He asked the least-tattoed of them (trying not to feel too disturbed by biceps the size of his _head_ ) where the phone might be, and was pointed down long twisting hallways to the kitchen.

It took him forever to find the landline in all the mess. Like everything in the house, it was cracked and scarred and looked as though it'd been flung with force into the wall more than once, but when he lifted it, a dial tone rang out steadily. He punched in the Hennessey's number, and waited with a swarm of butterflies in his stomach for someone to pick up.

"It's me," he said, glancing nervously over his shoulder as the boys in the hallway got into a noisy wrestling match. As expected, his foster mother delved into an angry tirade demanding to know where he was, giving him no time to answer; calling him selfish for making her worry.

"I'm so sorry, Mary," he lied smoothly. "I should have called you earlier, but the lines at school went down- power surge." There was nothing she liked ranting about better than the poor quality of modern amenities.

"My friends from orchestra decided to stay late and rehearse for the upcoming concert; I'll be home in an hour. Yes, I'll get my chores done as soon as possible. Yes Mary; yes... Yes, you are absolutely right. I apologize for my unreliability. I won't let it happen again. I’m very grateful for your patience."

He heaved a deep sigh that rose from his toes as he hung up, watching disgustedly as a fly twitched and drowned in a scum of rainbow-sheened water in the dish-filled sink, then turned to navigate the boy-populated hallway back to the room Lance had claimed as his.

This room, like the rest of the house, carried the distinct stench of pot and sweat. It was boxy and narrow; just a bare window and four matching walls with two bunk-beds on each side; eight mattresses total. Overflowing black trashbags of clothing comprised most of the floor. On the upper, far-left bunk, a pair of bruised legs dangled.

Pietro climbed the wooden ladder and cocked his head, regarding Lance, who sprawled with a bag of frozen peas over his face, the ever-present Walkman strapped to his ears. His dark hair snaked over a stained pillow, and his scraped hand fisted a ratty blanket over an otherwise naked mattress.

Pietro carefully poked his arm and then scrambled out of the way as that fist immediately swung to where his face had been.

“Take it down a notch!” he barked defensively, Lance’s shirt slipping all the way off his shoulder as he did so. “I come in peace, or whatever.” The renewed adrenalynn brought back more shaking that he simply did not have the energy for and he grit his teeth, trying to ride it out. He was already _exhausted._

Lance had the grace to look sheepish, the bag of peas slipping off his face to reveal a nasty rainbow of jewel-dark colors nearly swelling his eye shut, the whites of that eye reduced to burst red vessels. “I don’t like being snuck up on,” he grunted, almost apologetically.

Understatement of the century.

Pietro adjusted the shirt and sat cross-legged on the bed; it creaked under his small weight. Awkwardly, Lance sat up as well. “Your clothes are in the dryer.”

He shifted back and then hissed between his teeth, a hand flying to his ribcage as he did so. When his t-shirt rode up, Pietro saw dark bruises mottling his ribs, each one worse than the last. He remembered how those big boys had _kicked_ Lance…

“Should you see a doctor?” he asked, feeling his eyebrows inch closer together in uncharacteristic concern for another. His body healed fast, but he was aware that most didn’t.

Lance snorted at the idea. "I'd have to be pissing blood before anyone would take _me_ to a doctor. Anyway, this is nothing. I'll just steal some of Dex’s jack and sleep like a baby for the next few days."

Jack... Daniels? As in whiskey? As in...

 _Just swallow this, Pietro. It will help. I promise it won't be like last time; this concoction is a depressant. You will feel more focused, but it_ shouldn't _impair your speed... The side effects will be recorded later._

No. Now was not the time to think of Father's ‘experiments’. Once he got stuck in a rut of memories, he sometimes freaked out, and then he really would be out of energy. That just wasn't an option right now.

He fidgeted, hands spasming as his body and mind rejected the thoughts entirely. Lance looked at him oddly.

"Sorry. Cold," Pietro explained, though it was stiflingly hot up here.

 _Hot like his body after Father injected him with yet more chemicals; chemicals that tightened his chest, made him gasp like a fish on land as he struggled to breathe. As his heart slowed and sped and then slowed again, as he spasmed and seized._ This was it, this was the end, he'd surely not survive _this_ time...

“Oh hell… dude, don’t _cry_ …”

Lance’s appalled voice broke Pietro out of this reverie, and he felt that, indeed, his eyes had brimmed with tears. Humiliated, he turned away, but they fell just the same, lickety-split like acid rain down his cheeks. What was the _matter_ with him?! It’d been an age and a half since he’d lost control of his mask like this-- and in front of _Alvers_ , of all people...

Lance, too, was showing more emotion than Pietro had ever seen him express: in the face of tears, he looked uncomfortable to the point of distressed. This wasn’t a problem he could solve with his fists. He hesitated, then pulled his headphones off.

“Here,” he muttered, poking buttons on the Walkman seemingly at random, and then shoved the whole, warm thing over Pietro’s ears. “Here, just… Just calm down and listen to Kurt.”

 _Kurt_?

Pietro had heard Nirvana’s music before. They were a big deal not too long ago-- the lead singer’s death bringing the already popular band even more notoriety. It wasn't his style of music, but the opening chords were familiar anyway.

"Didn't he kill himself?" Pietro asked, swiping at his teary face with a wrist. "Kurt Cobain, I mean?"

Lance scowled darkly. "Shut up and _listen_."

Pietro shut up, and he listened.

_Come as you are/as you were/as I wanted you to be. As a friend, as a friend/as an old enemy…_

Lance, sitting up with one arm looped over a bent knee, tapped the rhythm out on his ankle. He didn't sing along, but his mouth formed the words:

_Take your time, hurry up/the choice is yours/don't be late…_

Almost despite himself, Pietro found his pulse slowing, his tears falling short. He wiped at his face again, trying to sniffle quietly.

" _Take a rest as a friend..."_

He said this quietly, not singing either, just muttering. Lance's eyebrows rose, surprised.

"You know Nirvana?" he asked.

"I didn't grow up under a rock," Pietro retorted, speaking a little too loudly from the headphones.

"Yeah right," Lance snarked, and then did something that shocked Pietro silent: he _grinned_.

Pietro had never seen the boy smile before. His teeth were a little crooked, and his already prominent nose spread further on his face. His black/blue/red eye watered from the motion, and he hissed a pained " _Ow_ ," turning his face back into his bag of frozen peas.

But he'd smiled just the same.

"You like them, I guess?" Pietro asked. It still wasn't his style. It was too moody by half… But Lance guarded his Walkman with his life, and kept his features expressionless most of the time. That he was sharing both probably meant _something_ ,

Lance nodded. "They're _everything_ ," he said, with conviction. Reaching up, he pushed at a ceiling tile until it slid aside and then, sticking his hand fearlessly into the dark unknown, emerged with dust and a shoebox. It was full to the brim of cassette tapes and AA batteries that he dumped over the mattress.

Looking at the plastic cases, Pietro could only recognize a handful of the bands available, but Nirvana turned up several times. All of the albums Pietro had heard of, and plenty more he hadn't. Some repeats.

"So you really just listen to music all day?"

"It's better than listening to people. When I listen to people, I get mad."

Would wonders never cease? There Lance went again, saying things that made altogether too much sense... and explained a _lot_.

Pietro carefully leaned back on the bed and, after a moment, closed his eyes to listen. He felt the bed shift as Lance moved his head closer so that he could also hear. He smelled good- like a campfire, and his nearness calmed the last of the shudders. They hadn’t ever talked this much before, despite working on the same project together. It wasn’t horrible.　

"You ever make a mixtape?" Pietro asked a few tracks in, tears forgotten.

Lance shook his head. "Blank tapes are too expensive."

"So steal them."

"Stealing batteries is hard enough; you have to bust them out of the case without anyone noticing."

Relaxing wasn't Pietro's strong suit. He was too aware, tense, _vigilant_ at all times. Father had raised him to be so; it was necessary for an evolved being of his standing. Yet he found himself soothed into complacency by music he didn't like and the human he couldn't stand just the same.

"Yeah..." Lance sat up and and started placing the tapes back into the box. " _I_ want... I want to make music like that someday. I'm gonna have a car and a guitar, and then I'm gonna drive so far away that nobody will ever find me. That's all I... that's _all_ I _want_."

Appealing as that dream sounded, Pietro didn't dare leave Deerfield. This was where Father had placed him, and if Father were ever to find him again, well, he had to be... he had to be right here.

This was not a train of thought that should be ridden too often, not when he’d only just managed to stop crying.

"You think my clothes are dry yet?" Pietro asked, his bare feet once again fumbling for the ladder, thinking of guitarists who’d died too young with music in their hearts and heroin in their veins in a desperate need to get _Away._


	5. Hello Kitty

_ May 1998 _

“And that’s, uh. That’s Germany. The end, I guess. Or whatever.”

Ms. Jacobs’ homeroom class, unused to hearing so much of Lance’s voice, had been sitting in very stunned silence during the allotted five minutes of their presentation. It was embarrassing, alright, but he and Pietro had worked  _ hard  _ on this project. As long as he didn’t look at anyone- especially not their starry-eyed teacher- he could manage this much.

“Class?” Ms. Jacobs prompted. There was a weighty pause before the students remembered to clap, though they continued exchanging shocked glances and whispers. Lance felt the back of his neck burn, but Pietro took it all in stride as he reclaimed his new seat in the back of the classroom; the one beside Lance’s.

“That was well done,” Ms. Jacobs remarked, her voice infused with the enthusiastic, upward lilt of a Disney princess. “Good job, Pietro and Lance!”

The way she said their names made them flow musically, as if they were meant to be said in the same sentence together in timeless song. It made the hairs of Lance’s arms stand on end. He glanced at the smaller boy. Although Pietro hadn’t responded, there was a certain cant to his chin that suggested he might have noticed it, too. The two of them sat quietly through the remainder of the presentations and, as one, left class together at the end of the day.

"Pietro! Wait up!"

Both boys, at the stop-sign leading to the first major road, turned at the sound of hurried footsteps.

Kitty Pryde was, for want of a better word,  _ adorable _ . Tiny and wide-eyed with round cheeks, a strawberries-and-cream complexion, and thick dark hair that curled under her jaw, she resembled a treasured doll. She sometimes got in trouble for talking too much during class, but her marks were high. She had the unmistakable air of a well-loved, popular child who would grow into a well-adjusted, contributing member of society.

She’d never spoken to either of them before. Girls like her just  _ didn’t _ .

Upon catching up to them she panted for breath, hands on her knees, as the two boys regarded her silently. Lance went so far as to push the headphones from his ears to around his neck to better hear what she had to say- a rare occurrence indeed.

“You doing alright there, pipsqueak?” Pietro, who was no giant himself, inquired. Her face flamed pink as flamingos, but she nodded.

“I wanted… to tell you…. Mom said…. To invite you….”

She held up a hand for pause and continued to pant. Lance was looking alarmed. If the class darling collapsed at their feet, they’d probably be blamed for it somehow. She recovered, eventually.

“Sorry.” she swiped the sheen of sweat from her upper lip with the back of one hand. The freckles dotting the bridge of her button-nose came into focus as she smiled, eyes crinkling. “Pietro. My mom thinks it’d be nice if you would come to my family's late dinner-party after Shavuot. There’s so few of  _ us _ in town, and…”

Oh. Her edging around the words clicked. Pietro hadn’t had any idea that Kitty was Jewish. He wondered if all her pretty little friends would continue being so friendly with her if  _ they  _ knew.

Lance, realizing that the conversation did not concern him after all, replaced his headphones and turned to leave. Without looking away from Kitty, Pietro reached out and snagged him by the back of his grubby hoodie, keeping him in place. Lance scowled, but stilled.

“Can’t,” Pietro said simply. “My foster parents wouldn’t like it.”

“Oh…” Knowledge of Pietro’s separation from his biological family was not common. He watched Kitty puzzle this out, thick brows inching together over cornflower eyes. She smiled again a moment later, expression clearing. “ _ Oh _ , but you could stay in one of our guest rooms; it’d be no problem…”

“No.” He released Lance and turned to walk away, dismissing her utterly without a word of farewell. From the corner of his eye, Lance watched her face pinch in consternation. She stomped her foot, and the heel of her sandal lit up with dancing red lights.

“That’s not fair!” she pouted, hands planting on her hips. Clearly,  _ someone  _ was used to getting her own way. “You could at least say  _ why _ . It could be  _ fun _ !”

Lance watched the idea take root in Pietro’s eyes. Without turning around he remarked, oh-so-casually, “If Lance can come, then I’ll go.”

Kitty blanched, missing the glare Lance shot at his companion. He didn’t have to be a telepath to read her mind just then:  _ Round Table boy! _

Pietro snorted and continued walking. Lance wished he hadn’t gone so far-- he knew that nobody from school liked him, but that didn’t mean he wanted this fact confirmed every damn minute. He turned his back fully on the girl so as not to watch anymore. But then--

“I’ll ask my mom if that’s okay.” She dug in her cluttered bookbag, pulling free a pink notebook and a matching feather-pen, then flipped to a blank page. “Tell me your phone number?”

Pietro had refused to give  _ Lance _ his phone number, stating that calling his house was something akin to a death sentence. So Lance’s expression went from gloomy to shocked in a heartbeat when, his back still to the girl, Pietro calmly rattled off nine digits from memory. Kitty scrambled to get it all down. He was already walking away again when she recapped her pen.

“I’ll call you!” she waved cheerfully. “Get home safe!”

Lance waited until they’d rounded a corner before grabbing onto Pietro’s arm, halting him in his steps. “What the hell!” he hissed into the sly face. “What’d you go and give her  _ my  _ number for?”

The fox smile only grew. Pietro Maximoff was all teeth. “Be _ cause _ , Lancelot; I get  _ bored _ . Now hurry up. You promised you’d teach me how to play blackjack.”

жж

“Pietro?” the sound of Griff’s approaching voice caused Lance to groan and roll onto his side in his bunk bed, swiping drool off his mouth with the back of his hand. “You mean the Maximoff kid? He’s Lance’s friend, I think. Oh, you want to talk to Lance? Okay.”

Griff, the Round Table boy closest in age to Lance, whom he’d bunked with since his father’s teaching him how to steal cars had resulted in his arrest, reached to poke him in the spine. “Phone for you.” He covered the receiver with a palm and whispered, leeringly, “It’s a  _ girl _ !”

Lance waved him away, shaking his head no. Griff told the phone he carried, “He can’t  _ wait  _ to talk to you, beautiful. He’s been dreaming of you.”

_ If looks could kill _ … Griff laughed silently, dropped the phone onto Lance’s bed, and flopped down into his own bunk, making kissy noises.

“ _ Lance _ ?”

Kitty’s tinny voice from the receiver had him repressing a dismayed groan. He hated talking on the phone even more than he hated talking face-to-face. And he really didn’t feel like explaining the situation. He toyed with the idea of just hanging up, but then she’d call  _ back _ …

“Yeah.”

She laughed, a trill of fairy-bells, and he rolled back onto his other side so he could prop the phone on his ear without holding it up. With his eyes closed, it was almost like she was there next to him. The idea wasn’t as disconcerting as it probably should have been.

“Oh, it  _ is  _ you! It’s the craziest thing. I thought I was calling Pietro…?”

“He gave you my number.”

“Why would he do  _ that _ ?!” Kitty paused, seemed to think her response might be perceived as rude, and amended, “I mean, I don’t mind talking to you-”  _ lie  _ “- but he said--”

“He was screwing- uh-  _ messing  _ with you, is all. He does that.”

“ _ Why _ ?!”

_ Because I get bored,  _ Pietro had said, and Lance thought it was probably the truth. The kid was an absolute whizz; effortless success at all things. No doubt he was bored all the time and got his kicks from pulling pigtails.

“Because he sucks. If I had his number, I’d give it to you.”  _ Lie. _

“But aren’t you two friends?”

That, Lance thought, was exaggerating things a bit. They talked now, and sat together in the classes they shared. If Lance didn’t know that Pietro was functionally fearless, he’d assume it was just for protection against further bullying. But on days he didn’t have after-school activities, he’d still make up some lie to his foster parents and come home with Lance, demanding the other boy teach him every card game he knew. Was that friendship?

“I guess.”

There was a pause. Lance considered, again, hitting the ‘end-call’ button.

“So what are you doing?”

“ _ Huh _ ?”

He’d told her what she needed to know. There was no need to keep the conversation going. She didn’t seem to have received this memo.

“I asked what you were doing. I’m painting my toes. It’s really hard to do while on the phone but I’m an expert! Your turn.”

Instead of answering her question, he asked, “What color?”

She laughed again. It was a nice sound, he decided. He wouldn’t mind sampling it, putting it into his music, if he ever got hold of some actual recording equipment. “Dark purple.”

“I thought you liked pink.”

If she thought this was weird, she rolled with it effortlessly. “You’re allowed to like more than one color!" Her voice was stern, lecturing, as if the topic was at all important. He tried to imagine the shade of purple.

There was another silence. She was probably focusing on not spilling her polish. He pulled his deck of cards out from under his pillow and began to arrange them, playing a mental game he'd invented for himself. He'd assigned a note to each card, and after shuffling them and laying them out, began to mentally compose the sounds they'd make.

Then: "You could still come to the dinner without him."

He shook his head like a horse ridding itself of a fly. "I'm not Jewish. I'm not anything."

"It doesn't really matter. Neither is most of my family. Guests are allowed." Everything she said lilted a little at the end, making statements sound like questions.

"I don't even know what it  _ is _ ."

She gave him a brief rundown of the night. It really did sound just like a dinner to be eaten after a night of study, fancy only because Kitty’s family was wealthy.

"I don't have anything to wear."

A whine was creeping into her voice. He remembered how she'd stamped her foot. "I think you're just making excuses now."

True, and also false. He doubted he owned or could borrow anything the Pryde family would consider acceptable.

He responded with a hum and a shrug, his eyes on his cards.  _ A#, C, C, Db… _

"If you're really that bugged, I'll bring you some clothes from my cousin. You’re about the same size."

Lance moved the ace of hearts from the fourth row to the fifth, considered, then moved it back.

“ _ Lance. _ ”

“Fine, I guess,” he agreed with a beleaguered sigh. “Whatever.”

She squealed happily. He made sure to duck his face so Griff wouldn’t see him smile.

жж

True to her word, Kitty Pryde did bring clothes for him. Her timing could have been better, however. When she approached their outside picnic table, they already had quite a crowd growing.

"No, you hold the cards like  _ this _ ," Lance leaned over Stacy Moreau's shoulder, cupping his rough hands over hers to show her the correct way to fan them. Her face pinked, and she would have dropped the cards, had his hands not been holding hers up.

Pietro noticed this, of course. Pietro noticed  _ everything _ and filed it away in the steel trap of his mind. The truth was that people, especially girls, reacted to Lance. When he was pushed into a leadership role, he was effective. When he talked, people listened. It could come in handy somewhere down the line.

He was no good at attracting marks to a hustle, though. That had been all on Pietro's to lure in a crowd of kids, promising to teach them blackjack, poker, crapps. All the games parents talked about but kids weren't allowed to participate in. Wasn't it  _ daring _ ? And it was  _ only _ for matchsticks, so what was the harm,  _ right _ ?

Right.

He'd cemented his success when he added, conspiritorily, for everyone at the hidden picnic table behind the football field Deerfield’s high school and middle school shared to keep this game of theirs secret. It was only for people deemed cool enough to play.

There was no better way to spread information than to demand it stay hidden. He was feeling quite confident that this time next week, the dozen or so ingenue attendees would have doubled. Hopefully the high schoolers would catch on soon, too.

None were more ingenue than Kitty Pryde herself, though. Pietro hadn't recalled passing the word along to her and, if he had, he wouldn't have expected her to actually show up.

Some of the boys who’d caught onto the rules fast enough to begin a game of their own groaned at her approach. "Great," one muttered. "Well  _ now  _ we're gonna be ratted out."

They were a week and a half into May. The school year was drawing to a close, and soon summer vacation would begin. For this gambit to pay off, he had to hook everyone on these games strongly enough to survive a summer apart… a summer full of enough babysitting and lawnmowing for every pocket to be lined with coin. Then, by the time eighth grade started up, these fat hens of his would be ready to pluck.

This wouldn't work if his little chicken coop feared the attention of narcs.

"Kitty, baby!" Pietro beamed, zipping over to her- check the speed,  _ check the speed _ \- and threw an arm around her little shoulders, planting his lips on her plush cheek. He was no big, handsome rogue like Lance, but he had the larger-than-life confidence to pull it off... and she was thirteen years old with unicorns on her earrings and a fairy on her trapper-keeper. Her face seemed to sunburn in a heartbeat and she gawked at him, blue eyes huge.

" _ Um _ !" her voice was the highest, shrillest of mouse squeaks. "Is Lance here?"

By some miracle of timing, Pietro's partner in crime heard her over the chatter of a dozen miscreants in the making. Lance looked up, shaking shaggy brown hair out of his rootbeer eyes, and Kitty's blush darkened. If she had any blood left in her circulatory system, Pietro would be surprised. This was too easy.

"Oh," Lance said, and released Stacy to approach. Pietro definitely didn't miss the glare Stacy sent Kitty's way. "You bring the clothes?"

He was walking more upright today. He'd even taken his hoodie off in allowance of the hot sun beating down on them, keeping his precious Walkman in Pietro's bookbag when someone else brought a stereo to play. Leadership looked good on him.

Wordlessly, she held out the cotton bag that she'd been clutching to her chest. "I think it'll fit. You'll have to wear your own shoes, though."

Lance took the bag from her, then shot an amused glance at Pietro, who still had his arm around her. "Would you knock it off? You’re freaking her out."

" _ Me _ ?" Pietro asked innocently, and gave her a dazzling smile. " _ I'm  _ not scary, am I, pretty Kitty?"

Stacy's scowl was hot enough to boil lobsters. Pietro fought his smirk down as he maneuvered Kitty to the spot across from her. "Come on, Stace; why don't you teach her to play?" He paused, considered. "Unless you don't think you  _ can  _ do it."

Game, set, match. He listened to Kitty's protests that she didn't even  _ want _ to play over Stacy's terse, angered instructions before turning to Lance, who was holding a white, button-up shirt to his chest, measuring the length of its arms against his own.

"For the dinner?" Pietro inquired, and Lance nodded.

Pietro's smile softened, briefly, to something less toothy, more genuine. "I can't wait."

Turning back to the table of gambolers just as the bell for class to resume toned, he announced, "bring pennies instead of matches tomorrow. It's more fun that way."


	6. Six-Stringed Wonder

Dex, Lance's sixteen-year-old housemate, sharked his rattly old Jeep through the swanky neighborhood, unlit cigarette clamped like a coin for Charon between his sharp white teeth. According to Pietro’s foster parents, Round Table boys either ended up in the military or prison, or both. There was little doubt which role Dex would someday fill.

"Which street was it?" he asked Lance, a little dazzled by each champagne-colored Mercedes Benz parked in every mile-long driveway.

"Camilla Ave," Pietro piped up from the backseat, squashed between a suspicious duffel bag with a lock keeping its zippers closed, and a television of equally dubious origins. "Which is different from Camilla  _ street, _ apparently. Did you know you have a pair of girls' underwear in the cupholder?"

"Dierdra," Dex groaned, then considered. "Or maybe Rosie? Bev? What color are they?"

"I'm not describing them, sicko."

Dex smirked around his cigarette, then whooped as he found the correct avenue, just across from a scenic little park complete with swingset and duck pond. "Damn, Alvers," he whistled. "Only thirteen and you're already getting some rich girl tail?"

Pietro cringed at the mere mention of Kitty Pryde's  _ tail.  _ Double sick.

"It's not like that," Lance glared, skin heating an unattractive ketchup-splat on his brown cheeks. "Kitty's-"

"Yeah, yeah,  _ just a friend _ . Try to get in good, though, alright? A rich friend can make or break your chances of getting out of this place."

Dex looked a little wistful for a moment, gray eyes furrowing. He was, Pietro noted, rather handsome. He seemed reasonably fond of Lance, at least, which was more than could be said about most of the Round Table boys.

"Can you drop us off here?" Lance asked. "We'll walk the rest of the way."

"Why?"

"Because you're barefoot, shirtless, covered in crappy stick-n-pokes, and you smell," was Pietro's practical answer. "You think 'rich girl' parents are gonna go for that?"

Dex didn't look at all offended; rather, he cracked a grin at Pietro in the rear-view mirror. Now it was Pietro's turn to flush.

"Point taken. Get out, brats."

Pietro grabbed his overnight bag that contained both his and Lance's things and climbed from the Jeep. Lance tried to do the same, but was stopped by a scarred hand catching him by the throat, jerking him back like a comedian’s hook, and ruffling his hair.

"Be good, you little shit."

"Yeah, yeah." Lance waved him off grouchily. Dex honked twice as he squealed around a corner, flipping them both off as he went. Charming.

Lance, muttering darkly, tried in vain to fix his now-mussed hair as they walked. It was still far too long to be reputable. Pietro had yet to figure out why the government employees that ran his house didn't buzz it like they did everyone else's. It now stood up like an electric shock, crackling. "Stupid Dex."

He was looking different, in a white button-down shirt tucked into black slacks (just a little too snug) and a belt that was, to Pietro's critical eye, genuine leather. His scuffed boots looked out of place, but Pietro highly doubted any parent who could make a Kitty would criticize the footwear of a child living in serious poverty. (Pietro's Father would have.)

The bruises on Lance's face from his fight in the mud had faded to a dingy yellow around the edges, and the split in his lip had mostly knitted closed.

Pietro was dressed similarly, but these  _ were  _ his own clothes. Mary and Angus took pride in keeping up appearances, and never hit or grabbed Pietro anywhere the bruises would show. (He wondered if that would change should they figure out how fast he healed.)

Pietro set his bag down on the sidewalk and reached up, tugging Lance closer. "C'mere." He licked his palms and slid experienced fingers through the thick brown hair, finger-combing it down smooth. "It's so  _ tangled _ ."

Lance wrinkled his prominent nose at the spit, but didn't pull away, even as strands were mercilessly ripped from his scalp. Not so long ago, he was practically biting Pietro's hand off for catching his arm. What a difference a month could make.

When Pietro declared it acceptable, he mumbled a quiet, embarrassed, " _ Thanks _ .”

The red setting sun cast long shadows behind them as they approached the house with the most cars parked in front of it; the metal porch bench-swing; the twisted white stone pillars supporting the grand archway. The whole thing smelled like new paint.

Pietro glanced at Lance's face, unsurprised to find the discomfort he’d been looking for. "Keep your shoulders up," he advised, climbing the steps and pressing the hummingbird-shaped doorbell of the three-story brown-brick home. "They're nothing compared to you."

Lance frowned. "What do you--"

Kitty, in a rose velvet dress that made her cornflower-blue eyes pop, threw the door open with a bang. "You came!" she beamed, and flung an arm around each of their necks. The tiny, golden Magen David ‘round her throat was cool against Pietro's cheek. "Come in, come  _ in _ , come meet everyone!"

Lance, for perhaps the first time since Pietro had met him, looked genuinely nervous. He twitched his head, which flicked hair over his eyes. The moment Kitty turned her back to lead them inside, Pietro pushed it back again.

“It’s  _ fine _ ,” he insisted. “You’re fine. I’ll just make everyone pay attention to me. As if they could  _ help _ themselves, poor things.”

This didn’t make Lance laugh like he’d hoped, but it at least drove away some of the trapped-animal look from his eyes. Pietro released him and followed the girl through a wood-floored hallway tastefully lined with oil paintings and into a comfortable sitting room.

On the circular sofa sat two middle-aged women with thick, frizzy hair and similar enough features to be siblings. There were some kids, about six and seven years old, and a man with Kitty’s bright blue eyes.

It was this man that Kitty approached, smiling brightly and slipping her small paws into his big ones. “Daddy, my friends are here!”

_ Friends _ ?

The older of the siblings introduced herself as Kitty's mother Teresa, and her sister as Rachel. Carmen Pryde, Kitty's father, was a convert to the Jewish faith. Zachary, the teenager whom Lance had borrowed the clothes from, and his father, were both home with a fever.

The children in the corner watched them shyly, and it was them Lance immediately gravitated towards, kneeling to introduce himself and ask what game they were playing.

Pietro didn’t mind. He handled adults better than he handled kids. He shook hands and  introduced himself, and they oohed and awed over his ‘ _ maturity for his age _ ’, all the while trying not to stare at his hair. As promised, he diverted attention from the other boy until...

“Kitty tells me you’re the music man, Lance,” friendly Carmen remarked, when Theresa and Rachel got up to check on the stove. Lance jerked up from his coloring book so fast that his neck clicked, spinning to stare at the man with wild eyes.

“Um!” Lance said, looking bizarrely as though he’d been caught doing something wrong. Sophie, the smaller of the children who’d been trying to climb into his lap, slipped off with a squawk.  _ Jeez _ . How was Pietro supposed to help the guy if he was just gonna be a total spaz all the time?

“He is, daddy!” Kitty, chipper as a woodchuck, came to the rescue yet again. “He’s always listening to music.”

“Is he now? I’ve got a few instruments under my belt, myself. What interests you, Lance?”

The teenager had a distinct deer-in-headlights look. Poor guy was completely frozen, addressed by this smooth older man; a man who’d somehow earned enough money to have a  _ house  _ like  _ this _ .

“Nirvana,” Pietro answered confidently for the silent boy. “Cobain.”

"Is that right," Carmen looked delighted. "You know, I have a little Acoustic signed by Cobain back in '91. Would you like to see it?"

Lance's jaw dropped. He made a dry sound that could have been a wheeze. He tried again twice before managing: " _ Kurt  _ Cobain?!"

This made Carmen laugh. "Come on, kid; I've got quite a collection gathering dust.  _ Someone  _ should appreciate it." He stood, stretched- back popping- and lead the way back to the hallway.

Lance looked equal parts fascinated and horrified, crouched like he wanted to stand but didn’t quite know how.

_ He doesn't want to be alone with him _ .

Pietro wasn't sure where the thought came from, but he trusted his intuition. Lance, much as he pined to see this guitar of dreams, did not want to follow Carmen.

Sighing, he slipped from the sofa, abandoning his duffel bag as he went, hooked his hands under Lance's arms- sweaty pits, gross- and hauled him with difficulty to his feet. "Come on; let's go look at your fancy guitar."

Lance stumbled clumsily and clung to Pietro’s shoulder for balance. He was so much bigger that Pietro was almost knocked down. Glancing, he saw an unusual expression on Kitty’s face, one he didn’t know her well enough to read.

Sophie and Tim raced ahead of them to a west-facing study. The setting sun no doubt made the warm-hued paint inside light up like a tiny fire, but it was dark now until the overhead light was switched on. One wall- the brick one- was comprised wall-to-ceiling of housekeys; thousands of them in all different shapes and sizes, carefully glued into a complicated mosaic.

The handsome desk underneath the window was entirely taken up by a large, clunky computer and printer, and the shelves underneath were stacked full of neatly-labeled binders.

The rest of the room was devoted to dozens of different string instruments and stands of sheet music.

Pietro, a skilled if not passionate viola player, was duly impressed. His eyes traced the fine horsehair of a cello-bow, still buttery-soft from the sun.

“Holy…” Lance muttered quietly, and bent to touch the fender of a Stratocaster as though it  _ were  _ some holy thing. His hand stopped mere centimeters from the wood and shook, as though believing himself unworthy of contact. “I’m…  _ What _ …”

Carmen stood by the door, hands braced on his lower back, smiling like a proud parent. “What do you think, boys?”

  
“Impressive collection, Mr. Pryde,” Pietro beamed. His dimples popped- a more effective feature on mothers, but the father looked pleased, breathing in the wood-dust of his small paradise. He was nothing like Pietro’s Father. Shorter, with thinning dark hair and a soft-looking middle. He looked like the kind of dad who cracked bad jokes and sneezed too loudly.

Carmen turned to look at Lance, who was wandering the room, hands tucked in his pockets and eyes wide as he examined the wall of guitars- most signed by some scrawly, loopy hand or other. “ _ Aerosmith _ ,” Lance breathed. “Guns n Roses? Sir, these are…”

“The one you’re looking for is up here, son.” Carmen touched just the very tips of his fingers to Lance’s shoulder and then pointed up, top-center row. Lance, stiffening from the touch, tipped his head all the way back and squinted, then frowned.

“I can’t--”

“Here.” Nudging a rolling stool with his socked foot, Carmen offered Lance his arm for balance. Lance hesitated a beat too long before curiosity won out and he took it, long legs swaying as he climbed. Pietro felt his smile darken to a glare when Carmen braced a hand on Lance’s calf, and he didn’t tear his gaze away even when Kitty joined them.

She pressed close, smelling of jam and honey, and smiled at the scene. Her family was just touchy-feely, was all. It was fine, even if it wasn’t what either boy was used to.

And Pietro would be there to ensure it  _ stayed  _ fine.

“Wow,” Lance breathed, his voice creeping high again and then going out with a pubescent crack. “What--! It’s  _ real _ , you weren’t kidding! That’s…” He was officially lost for words. Silence wasn’t unusual on him, but the wonder on his face was something else.

Sophie and Tim begged for turns to see the guitar that had so enraptured their new idol. Once Lance climbed down again, Carmen held them up one at a time to see, half-jokingly complaining of their weight.

Lance hastened to Pietro, eyes bright. “Tro,  _ Tro _ !” he hissed excitedly, hands clamping on Pietro’s shoulders. “It’s  _ real _ !”

Kitty laughed, and he flashed the same ecstatic, half-disbelieving expression at her. She hugged him. It seemed to be a trademark gesture of hers. When he returned the embrace, Pietro was struck with how  _ young  _ they all were, despite how old, how  _ tired _ he always felt.

Lance, despite his baby-fat and the beginnings of acne, had the markings of a man who could grow to be something great-- or something terrible. Pietro, a vampire for potential, felt it in his blood.

He was also actively,  _ properly  _ beautiful when he smiled; a fact that Pietro saw with his own eyes before reading, reflected, on Kitty’s face. He wasn’t sure he  _ wanted  _ to share this awareness with her. It felt like something he’d have preferred to keep hidden from the rest of the world, and from Lance himself, as long as possible.

Teresa appeared in the doorway, startling the knot of seventh-graders apart mid epiphany. "Dinner's ready," she said.

"Praise be!" Carmen cheered, setting Tim back to his feet. He clapped a hand on Lance's shoulder, and the other on Kitty's, ushering everyone to the dining room.

"You want to learn to play one of those things, son?" Carmen asked Lance as they walked, and the teen looked as though his knees might actually collapse underneath him.

"You'd  _ teach  _ me?!"

"Sure, why not? I'm not much of a groupie anymore, but someone may as well benefit from my misbegotten youth."

Maybe Dex was right; there  _ were  _ pros to making rich friends with connections. Kitty's little smile was triumphant. Pietro tried to feel happy for the boy.

Dinner was a hastened affair; a family tradition the little ones were still too young to appreciate. They nearly fell asleep into their kugel, lulled by the late hour and the dull talk of three consecutive nights of spiritual study. Lance looked too happy to care.

Pietro excused himself to wash up after dinner, relieved to find the bathroom had a window, and he ran vertically down the length of the house, onto the street, and all the way home, dodging the cars and trucks and motorcycles of late-night traffic across the overpass and back into middle-class living.

Mary and Angus were sat on their plastic-covered sofa together, table trays on their laps holding the remains of TV dinners, dozing through game shows like they did every night.

Pietro greeted them by name. They looked too lethargic to be truly annoyed by his interruption.

"It's about time," said Angus.

"Yes, I'm sorry. Chess practice at Claire's house ran late. I'm just going to bed now, if I may be excused?"

Mary waved him away with a dismissive, acrylic-manicured hand.

Pietro made a show of running water in the bathroom and opening drawers in his Spartan-neat bedroom, throwing himself on his bed so the springs creaked under his weight. Then he silently dropped out of his window and landed behind the bluebell bushes, pockets full of energy bars that he ate while he ran. If he publically ate as many calories as he needed to function, he’d certainly earn some stares and questions. He had to be covert about it.

He was back at the Pryde home just as Rachel and her children were leaving. Kitty and her parents were showing a nervous-looking Lance to the guest bedroom he and Pietro were to share.

Lance, no stranger to cohabitation, flung himself onto the king-sized bed, rolling across the fluffy red coverlet as soon as they were bid goodnight.

"This thing is  _ huge _ !" he marveled. "I feel like a marshmallow is eating me."

Pietro hadn't shared a room with anyone overnight since…

He closed his eyes, grit his teeth.  _ A pale hand reaching for him. Blue eyes, stark in terror. Her voice, shrieking his name like he was her only lifeline. _

_ No _ ! She was... she was  _ fine _ . And he had problems of his own to focus on.

Problems like Lance, head dangling off the bed and face quickly turning red from bloodflow, reaching for Pietro's bookbag and dumping the contents onto the floor, pouncing upon his Walkman.

"Hey!" Pietro snapped, diving for his things. "Quit that."

He threw Lance's clothes at him and hurriedly stuffed his belongings back inside, but Lance’s eyes had already landed on the battered spiral notebook that had fallen open from the rough treatment.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“My plans for your doom.”

“Ha, ha.” Lance braced his chin on his arm and watched with some curiosity as Pietro flipped the notebook open, showing Lance the pages of neat German writing. His attention couldn’t be held for long, however. “Carmen said he’d teach me to play the guitar.”

“I heard.”

“Do you… Do you think Pryde likes me?”

There was hope in those dark eyes. Pietro resisted the urge to snort. “Probably. Isn’t that the cliche? Rich girls always like the…” he knew he was being awful. Sometimes, he just couldn’t stop himself.

Lance’s face fell. Rolling onto his back, he kicked his shoes off and sulkily slid his headphones over his ears. The music emanating from his Walkman didn’t sound like Nirvana tonight.

He didn’t watch as Pietro changed into pajamas, but he didn’t avert his eyes, either. Pietro tried not to feel too self-conscious, but he knew he was small and skinny, his skin almost sallow and the bones of his spine visible and shadowed. He told himself Lance had seen worse, that he could care less. And maybe he was right, because by the time he returned to the bed, Lance was fast asleep.

Pietro regarded the sleeping form in some consternation, jealous that sleep was so easy for Lance. He didn’t have to battle insomnia like Pietro did.

The prospect of climbing onto the bed next to him made Pietro feel uneasy.

Grabbing his notebook and pencil, he repeated his trick zooming from the room’s window and into the Pryde’s backyard. It, like the house, was wide and sprawling and impressive, illuminated with paths of delicate-looking lights. There was a garden, a barbeque pit with a bunch of tables, and, of course, a swimming pool that had been covered with a plastic tarp until summer.

Wishing for the soothing sounds of water, Pietro ran a lap around the concrete wall that surrounded the yard. When he had enough momentum going, he flung himself over the iron pool-gate and sat cross-legged on the diving board, opening his notebook to a fresh page and efficiently starting a bullet-list of all that had happened to him that day.

He’d filled three identical notebooks since Father had ditched- er,  _ set him aside _ \- a year ago. If he didn’t keep a vigilant record of all his doings, how would Father be able to catch up with his son’s life when they were reunited? He wrote down every assignment, every grade, every extracurricular. Every chance Pietro had to make Father proud.

He was running out of space under the loose floorboard of his bedroom to hide the notebooks. Writing in German was just another way to cover his butt if Mary or Angus somehow discovered them.

He was so focused recording the events of his evening that he didn’t, at first, notice the small, nightgowned figure opening the sliding door of the porch and striding out to the deer-shaped fountain, shutting off its pulsing jets for the night. A string of lights went out, too, and that caused him to look up at Kitty, no doubt finishing up her nighttime chores before bed. She frowned and bent, a hand on the control box that seemed to be giving her trouble.

Before she could see him, he zipped to hide behind the box-elder tree that overlooked the pool, hiding behind its thick trunk and keeping an eye on her. The silver blur of his movement had drawn her eye and she frowned, looking at the pool. “Hello? Is someone out there? Auntie?”

She again fiddled with the control box and, a moment later, the lights that surrounded the pool turned on, illuminating the tiki bar. Pietro realized he'd left his notebook out in plain sight at the exact moment that she saw it. He resisted the urge to swear.

Kitty slowly approached the iron fence, looking around in some confusion. "Hello?" she called again. She reached for the gate latch, but it was padlocked shut.

Hitching her nightgown up to her skinny knees, she turned sideways and attempted to wedge herself between the bars of the fence.

She almost fit through the widely-spaced bars. It was likely as a younger child, she'd managed to do so with ease. But now her hips were just the littlest bit stuck, leaving one bare foot on the concrete of either side. She strained, grunting, trying to twist side to side and wriggle her body all the way through before giving up with a sagging huff of frustration.

Then, straightening, Pietro saw a determined look on her face. She closed her eyes, and…

And.

There was no other word for it: she  _ phased through  _ the bars of the pool gate and out the other side, like they were no more substantial than air.

Pietro wasn't often impressed, but he was certainly surprised. Apparently Pretty Kitty was more interesting than she looked.

She glanced back at the once-more solid bars as though to ascertain that she had, indeed, done the impossible. Then, nodding to herself, she padded to the diving board of the pool to pick up Pietro's notebook.

Hidden behind the tree, he watched her consider it, then flip the cover open. He smiled smugly as she blinked uncomprehendingly at the page after page of German. She paged through the entire book and, finding nothing in it she could read, closed it again and held it, contemplating. Then she turned to leave, carrying it with her.

When she started to repeat her phasing trick through the fence, Pietro took his chance to speed vertically over the metal, scaling it and waiting on the other side. When he appeared to materialize out of thin air before her, she parted her lips to scream.

Pietro clapped his palm over her mouth... Or tried to, anyway. His hand passed into her face with a cold, tingly sensation and out the other side of her head. Gross. He retreated and shook the appendage out, then spoke.

"So, Kitty-cat," he grinned, cocking his head. Half her body appeared to be impaled by the metal bars of the fence. There was no lying her way out of this incriminating evidence. "Do your parents know you're a mutant?"

'Like a deer in headlights' had never been so applicable a cliche. Her blue eyes were the size of saucers and her mouth worked silently, struggling for words.

“You might as well come out of the fence,” he suggested. “Kitty’s out of the bag.”

Warily, she did so, stepping through and leaving it unchanged. Her body seemed to solidify once she was on the same side as he. Her feet were again heavy enough to leave impressions in the grass. He noticed that the notebook and, thankfully, her clothes came with her. Interesting… Could she bring anything with her so long as she was touching it? Any _ one _ ? He could probably find a way to use that information later.

"My parents don't know," she whispered fearfully, shaking faintly. "Pietro,  _ please  _ don't tell anyone..."

He could have lorded it over her. He considered the benefits of blackmail. But she wasn’t entirely stupid, despite the vapid persona and valley-girl voice. She’d piece it together, eventually, that he wasn’t entirely normal himself.

“They wouldn’t approve?” he asked instead. Hell; had his Father also been Kitty’s, he would’ve kissed her forehead and bought her ice cream for this. Maybe a damn pony.

_ Father _ …

He would want her.

Pietro had no way to contact Father. He'd said he'd come back when he again had use for Pietro. If he could just  _ tell  _ him, Father would come  _ running _ back for this girl. Train her while she was young. Amplify her powers for use in the war. Use her to replace the daughter he could no longer control.

Pietro squinted his eyes and regarded the small girl, trying to imagine her with snow-white hair, eyes dull from drugs. It made him feel… Slimy. He didn't much care for the thought of Father pouring cocktails down her throat, shoving her into his various contraptions.

Maybe it was jealousy? It certainly couldn't be  _ concern _ . He didn't care an ounce for this fluff-brain!

"I won’t tell anyone,” he lied, eyes narrowed seriously. “And you can’t, either. Not your parents. Not your friends.  _ Not Lance. _ They wouldn't understand. They’d  _ hate  _ you. How long have you been like this?"

"It first happened last month," she whispered fearfully. Ah, that made sense. The X-gene usually manifested around the beginnings of puberty, but there were early bloomers like Pietro and his sister, and there were plenty of late bloomers too, like Father himself.

"What was that word you called me?" Kitty asked, licking her lips nervously and crossing her arms. It was chilly outside, and her nightgown was thin. She shivered in the breeze. "A... mutant?"

"You're advanced," Pietro said, clipped. "Evolved. Above the humans in our world."

"I'm not  _ human _ ?!" her voice shrilled over the covered pool-top, echoing dully. "I have to be! I've always been!"

"Shut  _ up! _ " he snapped, grabbing her thin shoulders with inhuman speed. He resisted the urge to shake her until her teeth clacked. "You are  _ better  _ than human, do you understand? You were made to _ rule _ them."

Her eyes were rapidly filling with tears like the baby she was. "I don't  _ want  _ to rule anybody," she sniffled. "Just take it away, I don't want it! I just want to be normal."

That stopped him cold. How many times had he whispered those exact words to his sister, late at night, sore and exhausted from needle pokes and radiation?

He repeated his Father's words now, trying to invoke his exact, stern, commanding tone and inflection. "You don't have a choice.  _ This _ is what you are. Don't disgrace destiny with pathetic cringing."

Maybe he was laying it on a little thick. She seemed to be struggling to breathe. If he pushed her any farther tonight, she might have a full-blown meltdown. Sometimes secondary mutations could arise from extreme stress. Loathe as he was to touch her, he cupped her face in his hand, brushing a leaked tear away with the pad of his thumb.

"You're okay, Kitty," he said, bringing his forehead to hers, feeling her panic-quick breaths on his cheek. "Better than okay. We'll figure you out together, alright?"  _ Father would be so pleased with him preparing her for his return...  _ "You're not alone, but this is our secret, okay?  _ Don't tell anyone. _ "

She nodded, closing her eyes tight. "I... okay. I'm. You  _ promise _ you're like me?"

"I'll show you sometime. In the sunlight. As long as  _ you _ keep your promise."

And just like that, she was okay again. Brushing the tears away like they were nothing. Giving him a wide, wobbly Kitty-smile. "Okey-dokey, then!"

It nearly floored him. There was no way she'd bounced back from the shock that quickly. She was repressing with the ease of an expert; he'd done it himself enough to recognize it. What in her rich, spoiled, beloved life had she  _ ever  _ had to put on a mask for?! Maybe there was more to her than he'd thought.

She tucked her hand into his, like they were a couple of giddy teens sneaking out for some moonlight canoodling in the grass.

"Come on," he tugged her back to her house- not to the door, but around to the west side. "And I’d like my book back now."

"Oh!" she handed it over apologetically. "I didn't know it was yours. Is that German? Is there anything you  _ can't  _ do?" Awfully chipper for one who’s face was still tear-stained.

There were tons of things he couldn't do. "Not much."

"Is Lance like me- like us?" she asked, clasped hands swinging between them. "A m-mutant?"

Pietro shook his head. "No. He's-"  _ he's nothing.  _ "He's human."

"Oh." Kitty looked, briefly, disappointed. He echoed the sentiment. If he'd been like Pietro, Pietro might have been able to keep him. An ally. A partner. As it was, he was only a temporary mark to use, like everybody else.

"Where are we-" she asked with a frown, when he stopped outside the bay window of her father's office.

He held onto her hand tightly. "After you,  _ Shadowcat _ ."

Her eyebrows raised at the nickname. "Shadow... Oh, you want me to--"

He nodded, wanting to test his theory. Her hand went tingly in his, but this time it was  _ his  _ entire body feeling that way, too, fizzy as shaken can of soda. Then she stepped  _ through _ the window…

... And he stepped in right after.

The tingling stopped when they, inside the guitar-filled office, broke their connection. She grinned sheepishly. "It's kind of cool, right?"

How vulnerable she was. How hungry for validation. He'd been like that, once.

" _ Very _ cool. Good job."

Arms up, she giggled and spun in a circle and narrowly avoided tripping on a bass in the dark. "I'm too excited to sleep. I've been scared since I found out what I could do, and now I know I'm not the only one. I feel  _ so  _ much better."

"Not all of us are good," he said, his mouth speaking without consulting his mind. This was  _ too  _ easy, and he was sliding dangerously close to feeling guilty. "Don't trust someone just because they're like us, okay?"

Even that couldn't temper her high spirits. She hardly seemed to listen. "I  _ knew _ you were special when I saw how Lance acts around you. I've known him since we were little, ever since he got-" she glanced around, leaned in to whisper- " _ taken away from his mom _ ."

Pietro didn't want to hear this from her. He knew Lance was messed up, could put two and two together and guess that he'd been hard-used by the adults in his life. But he wanted  _ Lance  _ to be the one to tell him his sob-story, if he ever did.

Thankfully, Kitty didn't divulge the judgmental schoolyard gossip just yet. She only went on to say, "He doesn't talk. He doesn't hang out with people. Even the guys who live with him don't really know him."

"Have a crush, Pryde?" Pietro jeered. "You seem well-versed on your Lance lore."

Predictably, her face pinked, but she didn't lose focus. "I'm just telling you what I've seen. You're different. He  _ likes  _ you. I think- I  _ hope _ \- this is good."

"He's good at blackjack, is all," Pietro shrugged uncomfortably. He nudged Kitty with his hip, ushering her closer to the door. "Seriously. Go to bed before your family catches us and thinks I was kissing you."

Her face went from pink to red so quickly that it almost glowed in the dark room. Distraction: effective.

"Well, goodnight then," she chirped. She took his hand again as she phased them silently through the hallways and rooms of her sleeping house. He felt like one of a pair of ghosts haunting the domain. When he stepped through the door of his guest room and gave her hand two squeezes, she released him, waved, and vanished.

He turned back to the bed where Lance was still snoring faintly, headphones clamped to his ears to add a soundtrack to his dreams. Maybe Pietro  _ would _ be able to sleep a little, after all.


	7. A Galaxy in her Eyes

_ June 1998 _

It was an unusually chilly June and, in the morning light, Lance watched Pietro shiver.

"I  _ told _ you to wear a hoodie," he said, practically. He himself was wearing one of Dex's hand-me-downs, which  _ he _ 'd no doubt acquired from an older boy to begin with.

"Shut up." Pietro was crankier than usual, though he was usually the more acclimated to mornings of the two. Lance thought he could guess why.

"Look, I know you don't like the woods-" he held a tree branch aside for the smaller boy to duck under. "But this is the best secret spot I know, so you're just going to have to deal."

"I wasn't arguing!" Pietro said, tone argumentative. Lance tried not to crack a grin. Pietro would cut off his nose to spite his face. It was just the littlest bit endearing, once he got used to it.

“Keep walking. I promise I brought food.”

School had gotten out the day before. They were officially eighth-graders now. Soon their schedules for the new semester would arrive in the mail. Lance had never had anyone to compare schedules with before. Their school was small enough that they were bound to have at least one or two classes together, even if Pietro  _ was  _ in all the smartie-pants advanced courses.

Funny; he’d never looked forward to anything school-related before.

“You could let me carry the bag for a while,” Pietro surprised Lance by offering. “It sounds heavy.”

It  _ was  _ heavy. In addition to their lunches, Lance had packed Pietro’s blue shoulder-bag with the jars of coins they’d accumulated in gamboling for pennies during lunchtime and after-school card games. If it wasn’t safe to hide things in Pietro’s house, it  _ really  _ wasn’t safe to do so in Lance’s home. Things like money went missing all the time. This really was their only option, especially if this was going to continue being a Thing.

“I’ve got it. I don’t think you should have told them to bring quarters next year, though,” he cautioned, stumbling on a knot of some gnarled tree roots. “They’re not gonna do it.”

“They will. Trust me.” He spoke with such confidence that it was hard  _ not  _ to.

“We’ll get busted if we get caught counting cards, though.”

“That’s what makes it  _ fun _ , Lancelot.”

Lance's not-grin broadened. He'd looked up the name in the school library after Pietro began calling him ‘Lancelot’, wondering if he was being made fun of. He'd been surprised to find a knight; a lover; a defender of the throne. Horse, sword, the whole works. A  _ hero _ .

" _ No _ , it's not a  _ compliment _ !" Pietro had sneered, genuinely disgusted, when Lance called him out on it. "It’s a  _ warning _ . Don't be a hero; you’ll just end up dying young for some stupid, ‘noble’ cause.”

It  _ was _ a compliment, though, and Lance knew it.

They reached a small stream and, walking carefully over rocks to the other side, Lance turned to find Pietro hesitating, uncertain. Probably didn’t want to get his shoes wet. Lance rolled his eyes. He set the bag down and held his arms out.

“Come on,  _ baby _ ,” he mocked, but there was a hint of fondness in his voice, and  _ he  _ became embarrassed on hearing it. He pinked, pale eyes flashing, and  _ stuck his tongue out _ ; a juvenile expression on someone who prided himself in being so adult. Lance laughed out loud, and nearly fell on his butt with an “ _ oof _ !” when Pietro leapt into his arms anyway.

“Call me a baby again and I’ll make all your AA batteries disappear,” Pietro threatened, glaring down at Lance’s surprised face. Wriggling back to his feet, he bent, neatly gathered up the bag, and started at a fast pace on the makeshift trail ahead of him.

“Hey, wait!” Lance called, recovering fast. “You don’t know where we’re going--”

They reached the grove eventually, when the sun was high enough in the sky that Pietro had stopped his shivering. The smaller boy, complaining of gnats, almost didn’t see it, but was directed by a single elbow nudge to duck under the hollow arch of a broken and rotting tree.

“Are you sure there’s-” he started to question, and then, “ _ Ohhhh. _ ”

Lance, for once, felt quite pleased with himself.

The perfectly circular copse of trees hid a space of soft grass, completely carpeted with tiny purple flowers. Lance had never been able to figure out what kind of flowers they were; he'd never seen them anywhere else. They were each about the size of a dime; five-petaled; ranging in color from lilac to lavender to midnight. The smell rising from the entire area was spiced honey-wine.

With the faint trickle of the nearby stream sounding in the shady spot making music with the birdcall, the rustle of leaves, it was something eerily timeless, made even more so by the fact that Dex's watch never seemed to function past the treeline.

As far as Lance was aware, nobody but the two of them had ever come here before.

He'd been worried Pietro wouldn't properly appreciate,  _ understand _ , the place, but the other boy stripped his shoes off without hesitation and stepped reverently forward with them in hand like he knew he was trespassing on holy ground.

Lance let out a deep breath and allowed a little smile to creep across his face. He'd  _ known  _ Pietro was special. He should never have doubted.

"This is incredible," Pietro whistled, picking his delicate path over the flowers, eyes focused on the shadows of each white tree trunk; the swirling dapple of leaves looking for one moment like a rolling ocean; the next, the dancing crackle of a fire. "What's this?"

He'd reached the one bare patch of ground; rich dark earth where no green or purple grew. Instead, only the white and red heads of mushrooms and toadstools in an inviting, charming little ring.

He made to set one small foot into the circle and, before he even knew he was moving, Lance dove aggressively for him.

“Don’t!” he protested, voice cracking, dragging Pietro back into his chest by the shoulder and snapping his free arm around his waist for good measure. “ _ Never  _ step in a fairy ring, dude! Don’t you know what could  _ happen _ to you?!”

Pietro looked around at him in shock, then tipped his head back and  _ laughed _ . The harsh sound was like the cracking of logs, the breaking of stones. It bounced off the trees all around them. It set Lance’s teeth on edge.

“Are you kidding me, Lancelot? You believe in  _ fairies _ ?!”

Lance’s face reddened; his shoulders hunched to his ears, and he resisted the urge to let his hair fall in front of his eyes. “I don’t know if I believe or not. But I'm not gonna let you find out," he mumbled, his hand gripping Pietro’s narrow shoulder even harder.

Terrible things happened in the stories Lance had heard from the other boys. Forced to dance until one’s feet bled. Transformed into a swan by day, a prince by night. Enslaved as a warrior for someone’s else’s fight. Spirited away never to be seen again. In a place like this, with a boy who had never quite seemed  _ real _ , Lance wasn't about to risk it.

"You aren't going to  _ let  _ me, huh?" Pietro's pointy face creased into a cruel snarl. "You think you can  _ stop _ me?"

"I'm not watching you get taken away." Lance's stony expression was set, stubborn. He'd knock the boy down and sit on him if he had to. He'd commit the ultimate blasphemy, douse the ring in gasoline and throw in a match to keep him out of it, like he sometimes did to abandoned buildings with the boys. “You’re stuck here with me.”

It was a silent battle of wills for thirty tense, breathless seconds. Blue eyes fought brown until it seemed as though Lance's heart had synced with the hummingbird-fast pounding of Pietro's own.

Then that pointed chin tilted, and Pietro caved. Just a little.

"Fine, Alvers. Fine. I'm with you."

Lance sighed as he released him, suddenly embarrassed at what was probably a ridiculous overreaction. "Good."

He let the smaller boy go and tugged the bag off his arm. Suddenly overheated in the direct sunlight he stripped off his hoodie, tossing it under the largest of trees before kneeling on top of it.

Pietro watched him curiously as he unzipped the bag, pulled out two jars rattling full of copper pennies, and wrapped them in plastic grocery sacks to protect them from the weather, then began to dig in the loose black dirt under tangled roots longer and thicker than his leg.

"You could help me," he pointed out peevishly.

"And get my hands dirty? I don't think so."

When Lance glared at him, Pietro grinned to show that he was only kidding and knelt to do his share of the digging. His hands two small, golden doves over the moist earth.

Lance felt Pietro peeking at his face a few times before taking a deep breath, pausing, then letting it out again.

"Something on your mind?" he asked, working his nails under a rock to dislodge it and toss it aside. "Spit it out."

"I was just gonna say..." Pietro bit his lip, considering, fighting. He seemed unsure whether to let go. "I haven't. Done anything like this. Since I played in the sandbox in Munich with..." His very faint accent was abruptly, noticeably thicker.

"With?" Lance prompted, lifting a mason jar to see if the hole was big enough. Not yet.

"With my sister."

He fixed sharp blue eyes on Lance's face, gauging his reaction. Apparently, this was a vital revelation that Lance was being trusted with. Lance's response  _ mattered _ .

"I didn't know you had a sister," Lance said, gentling his tone like he did with the scared new children first thrown into Round Table life. "Is she still-"

"She's alive. I don't want to talk about her."

The curiosity prickled. Lance tried to picture a girl with Pietro's face. Did she have white hair, too? Was she older? Younger? He hadn't been given the invitation to ask. "Okay."

When the hole was deep enough, Pietro continued digging, making it wider and flatter. To fill the silence Lance stated, "I don't know if I have any brothers or sisters."

It was very possible, considering he had no idea who or where his father was, and his mother...  _ Well _ . She'd been too far gone into her powders and needles to keep him, but that didn't make her body any less capable of producing a child.

Pietro gave a nod, accepting this. Then he reached into his bag and pulled out a stack of spiral notebooks, identical to the one he'd had on the night they'd slept in Kitty Pryde's guest bed and woken before dawn, his head pillowed heavy as a secret on Lance's soft stomach.

"More books for planning my doom?" Lance asked, deadpan.

"Obviously." Pietro smirked. He considered, reaching for more grocery bags to wrap the mysteries in. "Tell you what, Alvers. If you ever learn German, you're free to read them all."

"I'll keep that in mind."

They smoothed the dirt flat over the wrapped jars and notebooks, leaving Lance to think of all the stories he’d heard of pirates. If Pietro was right, if their ploy played off next year, then they'd have accumulated quite a buried treasure of their own. He liked the idea of being a pirate.

As a cloud wandered innocently before the sun, Pietro stuck his hands in his bookbag to unearth the paper sack Lance had packed. "I'm hungry."

"It's not even ten!"

"I'm  _ always _ hungry."

Lance could understand that. He, too, was  _ always  _ hungry, despite Dex's teasing that he was getting fat.

Pietro divvied up the squashed peanut butter and banana sandwiches, hardboiled eggs, a baggie of pickle and drippy tomato slices, the packages of sliced American cheese, and the two warm, canned soda-pops. Despite his claim of starvation, he was fair in the amounts each boy received.

Lance stuck the paper bag under his knee to keep the wind from stealing it and broke into his makeshift picnic with his...

... His  _ friend. _

How strange a word that was.

He would never in a thousand years admit it, but he'd taken pride in packing the lunches, wanting to make it special. He'd even almost used the last of the ham for Pietro's sandwich until Dex, passing by the kitchen, had paused and smacked the back of his head.

_ "Your boyfriend's Jewish, fuckface." _

" _Ow!_ Don't call him that. And so what?!"

_ "So,  _ dumbass _ , they don't eat pig." _

Lance didn't know if that was true or not-- he thought it might have just been Dex's excuse to steal the slice and eat it himself-- but he'd been extra careful in the packing after that.

Pietro didn't seem to have any problems with what he'd brought, and it gave Lance a proud glow to watch him crack and peel his egg with clever fingers. There was something grown up about this- a secret place with secret money, having secret lunch together like secret adults wearing kids’ bodies.

The pop made Pietro burp and, mortified, he turned so red that Lance howled with laughter, soda-tears stinging his eyes.

" _ Shut _ up, Alvers!"

"Make me."

When Pietro lunged for him, Lance burped in his face. It was an excellently timed, tree-shaking rip.

Pietro fell onto his back, hands over his face, gagging with the melodrama of a Broadway actor's coveted death scene.

"What is  _ wrong  _ with you?!"

Lance gave a smug little bow before flopping next to the boy, their heads both cushioned by the hoodie. Little not-quite-there ghosts of moisture kept flecking his face and arms, hinting at rain not far off despite the brightness of mid-morning. The clouds on the horizon were gray, swollen. Lance felt the promise of lightning in his bones.

"I like storms," he admitted.

Pietro considered, then gave a nod. "Yeah."

He had the tiniest patch of freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose. Lance had never noticed them before.

Pietro picked up Lance's closest wrist and frowned at the yellowed bruises that wrapped his forearm; four on one side; one on the other. Fingerprints. Big ones; adult-sized.

"What'd you do this time?" he asked. He tried to sound disinterested, but Lance saw the anger in his tight jaw. He wasn't always as closed off as he thought he was.

Lance struggled to remember. There was always  _ something _ ; the incidents blurred together after a while.

"Might have been when I told the workers I cracked the bathroom mirror."

"Did you?"

"Nah. One of the newbies did."

"So why did you--"

"He was little. He was scared." Lance recalled the boy's dirty face, cringing in fear as the government employee raged at them all; of how expensive it was to house them. He couldn't have been older than seven.

At Pietro's dubious expression, he felt compelled to add, "They don't hit me. They're scared of me." And afraid of Dex. There was no way to touch Lance without potentially risking the wildcard's wrath.

"What'd I tell you about being a hero?" Pietro asked, and there was real irritation in his voice now. "You want to live to see twenty?"

"Says you. You piss everyone off on purpose and then get beaten up in the mud."

Lance hadn’t brought up the fight since it’d happened. He wondered if Pietro would become angrier at the reminder, but was distracted by a faint movement just behind Pietro’s shoulder. He focused on it instead, then stiffened.

“Tro,” he whispered. “Turn around;  _ really _ slow."

To his credit, Pietro did as he was bade without argument, rolling onto his other side and laying with his back to Lance's front. Lance felt the exact moment he saw the rabbit; the tension in his wiry shoulders.

" _ Oh _ ," he breathed, with much the same awe as he'd had upon entering the grove, leaving Lance to wonder if the city boy had ever seen a wild rabbit before.

The little gray thing was close enough to touch; ears perked, nose twitching as it investigated the buffet of flowers, breathing in their heady scent. It didn't seem to notice them at all.

Lance rested his chin on Pietro's arm, and there both boys remained, still as eggs in a nest, watching the tiny thing and its drunken  _ scrunch-bop, scrunch-bop  _ movements across the grove.

Pietro's gasp was an electric thing when it brushed his bare ankle, fur hot and alive as a flame. At the sound, the rabbit startled. It leapt into the air and danced away, paws hardly seeming to touch the ground.

"No, don't go!" Pietro protested, half-sitting up as though to dart after it, a curious, lost  _ hurt _ in his voice. Then he gasped a second time, his hand clamping like a vice on Lance's knee.

There was such a breath of panic in the sound that Lance's adrenalyn surged, his fists clenching, his tense insides registering the threat before his eyes followed his companion's. Then his jaw dropped.

Swaying in the center of the fairy ring was an albino doe, larger than life, eyes focused intently,  _ fearlessly, _ on the boys.

She was a surreal and impossible sight; the tapered elegance of her throat haloed by the sun behind her. The graceful slope of her back leading to her knobbly legs seemed a mile long. Her ears swiveled at every sound. When her nostrils expanded to take in an audible breath, both boys were struck dumb by the pink of her eyelids and lips.

The hair on Lance's arms stood on end, and he shivered. Pietro's hand was painful on his knee. Without averting his eyes, Lance carefully spatulad his hand between them and felt crushing fingers lace his.

Her eyes were so knowing; so sad; so full of multitudes. A water-beaded cobweb dangled like the most fragile, temporal jewel from her ear. He wondered, guiltily, if she'd known of his thoughts to start a fire in this-  _ her _ \- home.

_ I am so sorry _ , he thought, because in that moment the scent of her wild musk reached them and magic was real;  _ fairies _ were real; and of course she was their queen.  _ Forgive me. Hail to the Queen. _

Another raincloud passed in front of the sun; it lingered, plunging them into a mockery of twilight. The doe turned her great head towards it, giving them her back, and only then could they breathe again. She stepped into the trees and faded from sight.

Lance looked down at Pietro's hand wound inside his own. Maybe it was because his emotions were so on-the-surface raw, like a sore throat after good cry. Maybe the constellations had blinked. But something about the sight seemed Right, in the same way Ms. Jacobs saying their names together had been  _ Right _ .

Pietro sniffed and tugged his hand free, covertly wiping his damp eyes. He looked, in that moment, the youngest and the most honest Lance had ever seen him.

"We should go," Pietro mumbled thickly, avoiding Lance's gaze. They gathered up their things and trash and made to leave, legs still wobbling from the shock, feeling themselves to be changed men.

By the time they reached the stream, they were nearly themselves again. And when they parted at the traffic light by the school, they were hustling to outrun the rain. The encounter already seemed little more than a hazy afternoon dream.

Still, in his ongoing quest to preserve perfect posterity, Pietro was found later to have recorded in his notebook:

_ In ihren Augen lag eine galaxy. _


	8. Tricky Treats

_ October 1998 _

With the full moon high and anticipation charging the autumn air, Lance, Griff, and the newest Round Table boy, Gaten, filled Dex’s jeep as he cruised for suburbia with ear-bleeding heavy metal on the radio juddering in their bones. Griff, not for the first time, was complaining about his mask.

"It's not even a  _ costume _ ," he whined, "And I can't  _ see _ . The eye-holes are weird."

"Oh, for-" Lance, mildly carsick in his stuffy jacket, twisted to scowl at the backseat. "Trade me, then."

Eager to finally get his way, Griff stripped off his hockey mask and accepted the Ninja Turtle replacement from his bunkmate's face.

Lance held his new costume and frowned at it. He didn't  _ like  _ horror movies. The older boys made them nigh unbearable; forcing the young ones to watch them and then scaring them silly, making spooky noises through the heating vents, inventing seemingly-plausible tales of boogeymen in  _ their  _ neighborhood, scratching the windows at night…

"Scared of old Jason, shitstain?" Dex teased, correctly reading his reluctance. "Or scared of  _ becoming  _ him,  _ ooh _ !" he wiggled his gloved fingers, ghostlike.

Lance rolled his eyes and reached to pluck the vestigial cigarette from Dex's mouth, giving it a drag as excuse to keeping his face bare. "Shut up, asswipe."

He attempted, and failed, to blow a smoke-ring, causing Dex to grin.

"That’s enough, tiny addict." he reclaimed his cigarette after a few more puffs that made Lance's blood buzz and his fingertips tingle pleasantly. He suddenly felt jittery, awake.  _ Hell yeah, Halloween! _

Lance was aware of Griff staring through Michelangelo's eye-holes, impressed. Once, before Gaten's time, when a government employee had pulled a cigarette from Dex's mouth, he'd laughed through decking her straight in the face and breaking his thumb on her cheekbone, then reared back and kicked her stomach when she collapsed. She'd quit her job the next day without so much as filing for assault.　

They reached the 'burbs closest to their respective schools- nicer candy than could be found in their own neighborhood without the suspicious pearl-clutchers of Kitty Pryde's- when Dex abruptly slammed the breaks, causing all three boys to jerk forward in their seats and the car behind them to lean on the horn. It swerved narrowly to avoid them.

"Oh, you  _ dick _ ." Lance scowled and punched the snickering teen hard on the shoulder. Dex didn’t seem to mind.

"Alright, losers! Don't do anything I wouldn't do. I'll pick you up around ten at the high school."

"How will we know what time-" Lance started to ask, but Dex just grabbed his arm, pulled off his own watch with his teeth, and fastened it around Lance's wrist instead.

Not needing to be told twice, Griff snagged three empty pillowcases and tugged Gaten from the Jeep to the sidewalk.

Lance bit the bullet and pulled on his Jason Voorhees mask, securing the raggedy old rubber-bands around his ears.

"Good?" he asked, trying to check his reflection in the rearview mirror.

"A real ladykiller. Literally. Hold up. I have something for you."

Lance, resigning himself to a spit-soaked finger invading his ear canal, was surprised when Dex instead dug through the clanking, half-empty bottles of jack stowed in the glove compartment and emerged with a white card.

"A bus pass?" Lance took it, holding it at arms-length to read the miniscule print through the mask's misaligned eye-holes.

“Pryde’s old man is giving you guitar lessons, yeah? Consider this my get-out-of-jail-free card. Now I don’t have to haul your ass over there all the time.”

The pass was marked, not for the single week that Lance usually saved up for, but a full  _ year _ . There had to have been a mistake, somehow, but as Lance examined the card, it became very apparent it  _ was _ real.

“Dex…” Year-long, unlimited passes cost around $130 and would take Lance just about anywhere he could feasibly consider going. This was pure freedom in plastic form. And it was far more than Dex could afford to give.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dex dismissed. “I have a job now; it’s fine. Today’s your birthday, so. Happy birthday. Or whatever.”

Dex was just as good at holding down a job as any Round Table boy, which was to say, not at all. He usually earned his spending money by stealing things and hawking the wares. Lance’s uncertainty morphed into suspicion.

“What  _ kind  _ of job?” he asked.

Dex's hyena-grin faded, and he fixed chilly gray eyes on Lance. "Don't piss me off, Alvers," he said warningly, quietly. "Say ' _ thank you, Dex _ .'"

He hadn't used that tone on Lance since Lance was quite young. It unsettled the younger boy, making his stomach flip.

"S-sorry," he attempted a laugh. "Thank you, really." He leaned in to give him a side-hug, relieved when Dex's stiff posture softened and a long-fingered hand gently carded Lance's messy hair. Lance was so seldom touched so carefully; it was difficult to resist leaning his face into it.

"Go on, get out." Dex nudged him towards the door after a few brief seconds of mushiness. "Go have fun."

Lance scrambled from the Jeep and joined his housemates on the sidewalk, accepting a pillowcase and waving as the Jeep sped off to unknown destinations. He stuffed the bus pass deep into his pocket and lifted the bottom of his mask to show his toothy, crook-toothed grin.

"Let's get some  _ fuckin' candy _ !" he urged boisterously, punching the air with his fist.

жж

Pietro, already wearing pajamas, hair damp from his shower, feigned difficulty with his cheery holiday music. Every time he intentionally squeaked a false note or rushed a bridge, his brain and lungs seemed to squeeze tighter. Soon he would crawl so deeply into his own mind that he'd feel nothing;  _ think _ nothing. He seemed to be spending more and more time in that numb, unfeeling place lately, and considered it a relief.

He could have played the entire measure flawlessly the first time the sheet music had been dropped into his hand, and that was two weeks ago. There was beating a dead horse, and then there was hacking it apart with a chainsaw and rolling around in the rot.

The lyrics to the incessant hymn would not leave his head. It pulsed there like a dull headache.  _ Christ the Sav _ iour  _ is bo-rn! _

He was too savvy in the ways of the Hennessey family to think for even a second that all his music containing named references to Jesus of Nazareth was a coincidence. He'd already narrowly avoided one summer at Christian Youth Camp. He wasn't sure if he could do so again next year.

The doorbell rang, and Pietro frowned. Eight-thirty was a little late for trick-or-treaters in a neighborhood like this; he thought he’d seen the last of them a while ago. Still, at this point he’d welcome  _ any _ interruption of this musical waterboarding.

Setting his viola and bow down on his neatly-made bed, he padded through the bright, tiled hallway of the Hennessey's one-story home, walls lined with photographs of them and their extended families on various vacations (usually to Disney World) over the years since their marriage twenty-three years ago.

The living room, with its many bowls of fake fruit and vases of fake flowers, was painted a chipper yellow color.  _ Everything  _ was yellow. Pietro had never hated a color more.

He scratched the back of his calf with his toes as he unlocked the yellow door and pulled it open to see two kids of about his age in dirty sneakers, holey jeans, patchy jackets, and tired-looking masks standing on either side of a little boy dressed as a red devil.

"Tricky treat!" the boy, front teeth missing, sang cheerily.

The shorter of the boys laughed from behind his Ninja Turtle mask. "Hey, it's Peter!"

"Pie _ tro _ ," Pietro corrected, made instantly snappish by the Anglicanization. "This isn't 1919 Ellis Island, yankee."

"Okay, okay," the boy waved him off good-naturedly. He had a vaguely familiar voice; obviously some nitwit classmate or other. "Pie _ tro _ . Trick or treat!"

Pietro glanced over his shoulder at his foster parents in the family room, watching yet another game show on television. They'd dressed in matching Mickey and Minnie Mouse costumes this year, but hadn't insisted Pietro also dress up, and he was thankful for small mercies. No need to pretend to be the quintessential Happy Family. They all knew the bounds of their loose relationship.

They hadn't heard his Ellis Island comment, which was for the best. That was exactly the sort of thing that made them angry at him. Best to get rid of his classmate as soon as possible.

Despite the Hennessey's warning to only give each trick-or-treater one mini-chocolate each, Pietro scooped a heaping handful of them from Mary's orange bucket into the devil's already nearly-full pillowcase. Ninja Turtle received a single Mr. Goodbar. Hockey-mask boy, who was standing like a robot with his pillowcase dangling loosely at his side, got nothing.

When Ninja Turtle turned to stomp off, Hockey-mask crouched to whisper to the devil.

"Huh?" the devil asked him, not hearing his instruction through the muffling plastic mask. The tallest boy whispered again, more empathetically this time. "Oh."

Turning back to look up at Pietro, the dirty-faced devil smiled in all his gap-toothed glory. "Thank you, ath-hole!" he cheerily lisped.

Hockey-mask face-palmed. It was a very familiar motion, and suddenly Pietro understood his dumbfounded stillness.  _ Oh, hell. _

Hockey-mask turned stiffly to leave, but Pietro sat the candy-bucket down and shut the porch door behind himself, the unnaturally green grass of the manicured front lawn wet and frost-crunchy under his bare feet. It was just chilly enough to see dragon-puffs of breath suspended before everyone’s faces.

With just the faintest push of mutant speed, Pietro circled the boys and slipped his fingers between mask and skin, pulling the thing off Lance's red face.

"You're welcome, asshole," he said sweetly.

"Sorry," Lance mumbled sheepishly, before Pietro could say anything else. "I know you didn't ever want me to come to your house. I swear I didn't know this one was--"

Pietro shrugged. It was an accident. Couldn’t be helped now.

He and Lance turned to regard the band-aid beige cube of a house, horrific in its identical nature to the houses and mailboxes surrounding it."Having fun?" he asked. Ninja Turtle was already knocking at the house next door.

Lance shrugged. When the devil wandered too close to the street, Lance grabbed his hand, jerking him back to safety with the practiced air of habit. "I guess. Wanna come with?"

Pietro shook his head. "I'm supposed to be rehearsing for the Christmas concert," he rolled his eyes. "I told them that violins always get the solos, not violas, but they want me to have my name in the program."

"That  _ sucks _ ." Lance sounded like he meant it.

As odd as it was to see  _ Lance _ , one of the few parts of Pietro's life worth having, in  _ this  _ soulless place, he was glad. His night really had been sucking until just now.

"Tell you what," he said. "If you can wait nearby til nine, I'll 'go to bed' early and meet you somewhere."

Lance smiled, one of his rare  _ Lancelot  _ smiles that showed his crooked canine teeth and warmed his eyes like polished mahogany. "Yeah, man, we can do that. Where do you want to meet?"

They made plans. Pietro handed the mask back and returned to his room and music with lighter spirits than before. He ran through his songs twice more and at last allowed himself to play the pieces flawlessly.

From the family room he heard Angus' muttered, " _ finally _ ," and grit his teeth. Faking human mediocrity was going to be the death of him.

Putting his instrument away, he switched his lamp off and, in the dark, silently dressed in warm clothes. He rummaged in his drawer until he found the half-mask he'd wowed his art teacher with, having hand-stitched hundreds of miniscule blue-crystal beads onto shimmering silver fabric.

Affixing the mask to his face, he crept from the window and set off at a brisk walk towards the town's only elementary school playground.

жж

Following Deerfield Elementary’s Fundraising Fall Festival the night before, the school’s playground was a graveyard of deflated bounce-houses, partially disabled game-booths, and pumpkin-shaped orange and purple lights strung among the trees that nobody had bothered to clean.

The eerie look of a gutted carnival was, in the collective opinion of the city's teen populus, positively ideal for a Sunday Halloween bash.

Gaten was shocked into temporary, bug-eyed silence at the sight of his beloved playground being used for such bachanellia.

" _ Lance _ ," he hissed, tugging on Lance's sleeve and pointing as they stashed their pillowcases in a large tree’s branches. "A werewolf is  _ kithing _ that vampire."

Lance glanced at the indicated teens, tangled passionately on the swingset. The vampire was holding her plastic fangs in hand as her mouth was otherwise occupied.

"Good for them," he said disinterestedly. He kept scanning the crowd for white hair. A few petite girls in wigs gave him false hope, but he sagged in disappointment each time he realized that he was mistaken. What if Pietro couldn't get away after all?

"Dude!" Griff barrelled into Lance from behind like a tank, throwing two arms over his bunkmate's neck when he stumbled. "Dude, they're selling food out of a van. Come on, I know you have money.  _ Please _ ?"

He tried to stuff a hand into Lance's jeans pocket, then squealed in agony as his thumb was caught and twisted. Lance effortlessly kicked Griff's knees out from under him, knocking him prone to the grass and stomping a foot onto the meat of his shoulder.

Lance growled, shoving his mask up so that he could bare his teeth ferally at the other boy, looming intimidatingly over him.

"Lance, I'm  _ sorry _ ," Griff whimpered fearfully, then yelped as his thumb was wrenched further. It'd be so  _ easy _ to break... "I didn't mean anything by it, please…!"

The surge of power Lance felt from being begged for mercy was heady, intoxicating, better than any puff on a cigarette. He wondered if he could get him to beg more; to cry in front of all these big kids. To--

Oh. Gaten was staring at them, mouth dropped, dark eyes huge. He looked scared.  _ Shit _ . Suddenly Lance felt horribly, sickeningly guilty. He released Griff's hand and stepped back, lowering his mask again to hide his face.

"Don't do that again," he grunted, and turned away as Griff climbed nervously back to his feet. After a tense and awkward silence, he tentatively asked Gaten, "Are  _ you _ hungry?"

Gaten shook his head no, his felt devil's horns flapping. That was a blatant lie; they hadn't eaten since lunch, and it was just past nine.

"Yeah, you are. Come on." To Griff he asked, "Where's this van?" He was too ashamed to meet his eyes.

They made a mournful procession to where a pair of business-minded Sophomores had filled a junky old van (which also happened to be the party’s source of music) with crock-pots of hot dogs, packages of buns, and a cooler of sodas and condiments. There were chips for sale, too, and glowsticks. Pietro would have appreciated such ambition.

Filing into line behind the high schoolers, Lance closed his eyes and tilted his head, inhaling. He smelled beer. He  _ wanted-- _

"Lance, is that you?" a girl's voice had him looking down. It took his glitching brain a moment to register Kitty Pryde's face under that big purple wig.

Her blue eyes were outlined in sparkling purple liner, and her mouth was painted a wide lavender smile. Scales had been pencilled over her cheeks, and a necklace of shells encircled her throat. He supposed the shimmery green dress and filmy scarf were supposed to represent a mermaid's tail and fins.

"H-hi," he stuttered, caught off guard. She laughed brightly. There were the bells again.

He recognized the tittering gaggle of girls around her, now, as her friends from school. Apparently he wasn't the only middle-schooler doing some party crashing.

"It's Lance's birthday," Griff blurted, and then cringed when Lance glanced sharply his way. Kitty didn't seem to notice.

"Is it?!" she squealed, blue eyes bright. She touched Lance's arm, beaming brightly up at him. "That's so great! Happy  _ birthday _ !"

Lance's tongue suddenly felt heavy in his mouth. The place on his arm that she'd touched now felt quite warm. "Um. Thanks."

Her friend tapped Kitty's shoulder, giving Lance a disapproving glare when they reached the truck. As Kitty selected an icy-wet can of strawberry pop from the cooler, Lance impulsively leaned over her and handed the teenager working the van a crumpled dollar bill.

Kitty spun to face him, purple mouth dropping in dismay. "But it's  _ your  _ birthday!" she protested. "I should be treating you!"

Lance shrugged. "Maybe next time."

He almost redacted the words when he saw how they made Kitty's face glow. It’d almost sounded like he was asking her on a-

"Whadda you want, kid?" the teen asked him. Trying not to mumble, Lance ordered two hot dogs each for himself, Gaten, and Griff.

"Six bucks," the teen yawned, and Lance's insides went cold.  _ Shit!  _ All he had left in his pocket, aside from his new bus pass, was a five.

He handed it over, about to subtract a dog from the order, humiliated to have to do so in front of  _ Kitty _ , but the teen met his eyes through the mask. They softened in tired understanding.

Before Lance could insist that he didn't accept charity, that he'd help them clean up or  _ something  _ to pay it off, the teen snagged the bill from Lance's hand.

"Alright, go on now," he waved them off shrewdly. "You're holding up the line."

Dazed, Lance and the other Round Table boys took their six dogs and did as asked. Kitty was urging her friends to go and dance without her. "I just want to finish my drink," she pressed, smiling winningly. Again, the redhead squinted distrustfully at Lance, but did as she was bade.

"Brr!" Kitty shivered pleasantly, rejoining the boys. Gaten was inhaling his food like a starving wolf. Griff wasn't doing much better. Lance tried to take smaller bites, but was just as hungry as they looked. "It's  _ cold  _ outside!"

"It's cuz your pop's cold," Griff said helpfully, the Ninja Turtle mask pushed to the top of his head as he ate. "And your dress is--"

He flushed, glancing away from the thin material, the short sleeves. Lance glared at him again. He quailed under the expression.

"H-hey, buddy," he said to Gaten. "Look, they're doing a cake-walk like the one you won yesterday; wanna go play?"

The partying teens had indeed set up a cakewalk on the painted squares from the night before, but it wasn't cupcakes and doughnuts they were offering as rewards anymore. Lance pointed his hot dog empathetically at Griff.

"Don’t let go of him, and do  _ not  _ let him drink anything."

"I'm not  _ stupid _ ," Griff scoffed, already grabbing onto Gaten's hand and hauling him to the blacktop.

Kitty watched them leave. "You're good with kids," she observed. "Sophie and Tim are still talking about how fun you were at the Shavuot dinner."

"I guess." He hadn't _ felt _ very good with kids when he’d seen the fear in Gaten's eyes- fear of  _ him _ . He remembered his mother's boyfriends, back from when he was small. He’d felt  _ exactly _ the way Gaten had looked when he was around them.

When she walked towards the trash to throw her pop-can away, he followed.

"Here." He shed his jacket before holding it out to her.

"Oh, no, I couldn't-" she protested, again glancing to the clustered circle where her friends danced.

"Aw, come on. You're cold, right?"

Finally she took the jacket with a red-faced “thanks,” zipping it to the top. It dwarfed her, the sleeves falling over her fingertips. His heart suddenly seemed too large to fit in his chest.  _ He  _ had kept Kitty Pryde warm.

She bit her lip, seeming lost in thought for a moment, then offered him her hand. "Wanna dance with me?"

"O _ kay _ ." Of course his voice chose that exact moment to crack. Stupid hormones. Stupid puberty. Stupid body with too-big hands and feet always tripping him up.

He hadn’t the faintest idea of how to dance, but her hands were little warm stars inside his own and he attempted to bop and sway like everyone around them, frantically recalling all the times he’d seen people do this on TV.

Lance was, as he'd feared, all elbows and double-left feet. Though he tried to keep the two of them on the outskirts of the swirling mob, they were just small enough to be sucked into the vacuum, buffeted on all sides until they found themselves in the eye of the storm. He instinctively dragged Kitty closer, protectively as he might with Gaten.

Looking out from the center of the crowd of masked and costumed teens, Lance abruptly felt dizzy; disoriented. The inviting waft of beer, the stink of sweat, and the skunky kiss of pot seemed to rise from all directions and was growing stronger by the second. It did nothing to calm his anxiety.

He remembered, suddenly, something Ms. Jacobs had told his homeroom class the year prior. Though he was fuzzy on the details, he remembered that she had tried to bring renewed interest to the drizzly day by telling them the ancient Celtic myths and legends behind All Hallows’ Eve in a spooky, witchy voice.

“ _ On the night when the door between the living and the dead hangs open, ghosts are allowed to wander the world freely. To avoid being recognized by these malevolent spirits, villagers disguised themselves to pass freely through the night, collecting soul-cakes and praying for dead relatives…” _

He stared at Kitty as she laughed and danced, the purple wisps of her crooked wig whipping the air. Was she disguised enough to be safe on this night of death? Was  _ he _ ?

In the blurry motion between blinks it seemed to him that the crowd around them  _ were  _ as they dressed. Mummies and ghosts and princesses... and  _ fairies _ . Everywhere he looked, a whirling dervish of  _ beautiful _ and  _ terrible _ with slitted pupils and jagged teeth and reaching, clawed hands, nefarious and ever-scheming. Lance thought he sensed the grit of sugar on his dry lips...

_Never_ _dance with the fey. If they find they like the taste of you, they may just keep you forever._

Kitty brought him back to himself by reaching up and cupping his face in her palm. She had stopped dancing. "Lance, are you alright?” Her blue eyes were furrowed, concerned. “You look like you're about to fall over."

There was nothing fey about  _ her _ , with her rounded ears and chipped front tooth. She was perfectly,  _ delightfully _ ordinary. Lance, stabilized by her touch, forced a smile. Weird, trippy night. Maybe he was contact-high. "Yeah; yeah. C'mon, you wanted to dance..."

Holding her hand, he spun like John Travolta, trying to imitate her goofy movements from before, trying to  _ feel  _ the childlike lightheartedness that  _ she  _ so clearly felt...

… And then his heart shot into his throat when the slight, masked figure just behind him grinned, toothy and foxlike and very close.

" _ There  _ you are!" Lance exclaimed, loud, over the continuous and heart-shuddering pulse of music. His own heart violently bruised itself against his ribs.

Across his cheekbones, Pietro was wearing the kind of mask that made Lance think of masquerade balls at an old-timey castle. It was sort of girly- the kind of thing kids at school would definitely make fun of him for- but Lance thought it looked good;  _ cool _ , even. Perfect for this strange and in-between sort of night.

It put the cheap plastic mask still resting atop his own head to shame.

From his jacket pocket, Pietro withdrew a handful of glowsticks and, swaying with the crowd, snapped and shook one until it shone red as a lie.

He reached up. Lance bent to accommodate him, so he tucked it behind Lance's ear as though crowning a king. Lance couldn't help but to laugh, a nervous uncertainty bubbling from his gut.

Without breaking eye-contact, Pietro secured two blue sticks into circlets using the suction cups attached and wore them as bracelets. They blazed twin trails of light when his arms thrust into the air and swayed.

"Hey, Pryde!" Pietro called around Lance, still dancing with a grace and surety of self that Lance envied fiercely. "C'mere."

Lance guiltily realized that he'd almost forgotten she was there, despite her hand still tucked into his. To make up for it he slung an arm round her trim waist and spun to deposit her at Pietro’s feet, causing her to giggle.

Pietro, observing the jacket she wore, flashed Lance a knowing look over her shoulder. Lance refused to blush. He also refused to acknowledge the confused, pleased curl the expression sent through his stomach. Maybe it was just the hot dogs talking, but he sort of, _kind_ of liked that Pietro had noticed.

Kitty obligingly tilted her head, first to the left, then to the right as Pietro grandly affixed two glowing green hoops round her dainty ears like gaudy jewelry. He then took her free hand and slipped a plastic ring shaped like an arching black cat onto her pinkie finger.

Now it was Lance's turn to give Pietro a  _ Look _ . The foxlike smile wasn't the least bit abashed. If anything, it  _ grew.  _ Lance had vaguely thought that Pietro didn't much like Kitty, but he seemed all sorts of charming now. Sometimes it was hard to tell what Pietro did and didn't like.

Kitty had a funny look on her face, as though she too was made uncomfortable by the ambiguity. He had the impression she was about to push them both away from her, but after a moment’s pause she instead linked one arm around Pietro’s neck and the other around Lance.

The relief Lance felt at the small gesture was immediate as it was intense.  _ Yes _ , he thought.  _ Thank you. _

He pushed his mask back over his face before grabbing onto the both of them. The energy he'd been missing before was now fully present. He felt like a glowstick himself, cracked and shaken and ready to shine. He felt like they’d all stepped into that doorway between the living and the dead as they danced.  _ Hell yeah, hell  _ yeah!  _ Halloween! _

It was, without question, the best birthday he’d had ever had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of part I. Part II coming soon.


	9. Part Two: Monkeys in a Cage

  **Mix Tape**

**Part Two**

  ****

_Don’t let us get stupid, alright?_  
_Just make us be brave,_  
_and make us play nice,_  
_and let us be together tonight._  
  
Warren Zevvon, “Don’t Let Us Get Sick”

  
жж

_May 1999_

 

 Hazel Jacobs had been asked, by her parents and by her friends, why she’d chosen to teach middle school. Most of her classmates at ISU dreamed of becoming the beloved and treasured teachers of young minds at an elementary school, or hoped instead to escape childish nonsense entirely at a high school.

Nobody wanted to work at a _middle_ school. It was, apparently, where teachers and staff washed up when they couldn’t find any other work; a dark point in their careers as they awaited better openings elsewhere.

“Middle school is two or three years of pure hell,” she’d heard, time and again. “It’s when kids’ hormones just go whack-a-doodle. They’re wild monkeys in a cage!”

Hazel firmly, politely, _strongly,_ disagreed. In her opinion, children between the ages of twelve and fourteen were both at their most vulnerable and their most dear. They were just the littlest bit magical in this transitive state. Watching them bloom and grow into young adults gave her hope for the future of the world.

In her many years of teaching, she’d loved each and every one of her students, charming or difficult as they may be.

One warm afternoon saw her humming to herself as she pushed a cart through the school’s library, helping her friend Barbara the librarian reshelve books. It was such a shame that all the Deerfield schools received such little funding. Most of these materials had been here since she was a student.

As she rearranged the messy books that were jammed about the nonfiction section, familiar voices caught her ear. She turned to better hear them.

“-- _not_ leaving until we finish this, Lancelot!”

“Oh, piss off. I already told you I can’t get this. Let it go already.”

Frowning at the coarse language, she tiptoed forward and peeked over the waist-high shelf, where a brown and a white head of hair were tipped close in consideration over a textbook and a pile of messy notes. Two of her former students, she realized, sitting cross-legged on the floor between the stuffy bookshelves on a spring day as lovely as this?

“I’m _not_ letting it go. Final exams are next week and you are going to pass all of them if I have to kick your ass to make it happen. Why did you ditch so much this semester, you idiot?”

Lance gazed longingly at the Walkman resting atop his bookbag. An actual bookbag! In fact, now that Hazel looked him over, Lance appeared to be wearing clothes that, while not new, were significantly more whole and fitting than the rags she’d come to associate him with.

Pietro glared, probably annoyed by Lance’s divided attention, and poked him sharply in the ribs. Hazel felt her breath catch. Lance did _not_ like being touched by anyone. He’d gotten into fights for less. She mentally prepared herself to pull them apart-- not an easy task, they’d each gotten a little bigger since they’d been in her class-- then stilled.

Lance Alvers was smiling _-_ \- a warm, eye-crinkling glow-- at the smaller boy, who was pressing irritably into his side like a fussy, purebred cat would press against a clumsy mutt. Goodness, but he had a positively lovely smile.

“It’s cute that you worry, Tro,” he teased, but there was no disguising the softness in his voice, or the fact that their heads were now touching, one stacked on the other. “But you said it yourself: I’m stupid, so what does it matter?”

Pietro’s lip curled in what looked like genuine disgust. He gave Lance a shove. Again; no retribution, just quiet acceptance. “You wanna _stay_ stupid?! I know you’re good when you try.”

"In math or science, I guess," Lance admitted with a shrug. "But that doesn't matter. I can't pass the English final. I won't graduate. Sorry I'm not perfect like you."

Hazel had never heard him speak so much at once before. He had a nice voice, if a little raspy, a little mumbled. It occurred to her that she should leave them be, to let them work this out in private. But, well…

Pietro fixed intense, commanding blue eyes on the other boy, speaking slowly and fiercely. "You are _not_ making me go to high school alone. So figure it out, Alvers."

A doglike whine was creeping into Lance's voice. He fidgeted uncomfortably, eyes darting about for rescue. "You wouldn't be alone. You'd have Kitty, and Dex is gonna be a senior, and there's all those girls in your drama club that think you're so great--"

"They aren't you."

There was a raw sort of honesty in those three words. Pietro, flashy and exorbitant to hide how guarded he truly was, had never spoken so in her memories of him. Hazel brought a hand to her mouth. This sun-golden, dust-scented afternoon was just one surprise after another.

Or was it, really? Just one year ago, Pietro, filthy and trembling, had sprinted for her and Ryan, dragging them by the hands at a breakneck speed into the woods. " _They're gonna_ kill _him!_ " was all he'd said, eyes half-crazed, and for one heartstopping moment she'd truly believed Lance Alvers to be dead; still and limp and facedown in mud...

How much had changed since then? These two appeared to be closer than ever, like the unlikely roots of mismatched saplings tangling as they grew into great oaks.

"Yeah?" Lance asked after a considering pause. His brown eyes on Pietro's downturned face seemed, briefly, much older than their fourteen years. "Not me, huh?"

Pietro, embarrassed, flipped rapidly through his textbook, avoiding eye-contact. "Nope. So let's do this. I've got copies of previous English finals, and you'll have to study my notes, I guess. You need to get at least an eighty-two percent to pass the class with your low grades, so..."

Hazel silently stepped away from the shelf and out of their lives. Being a teacher was the joy of her life, but it often wrought a bittersweet ache. To have loved someone so much, but so _briefly_ , was sometimes more than her soft heart could bear.

She left them to their story, their future, and their miracle.

жж

_June 1999_

Summer vacation was a relief to most students, but to children with rocky home lives, it could be a terrible burden.

Pietro, in a numb and sunken frame of mind, walked the streets of _town name_ as the June sky bruised indigo and plum, the scent of dusk after rain itching his nose. He felt both distanced from his body and hyper-aware of insignificant details: the sound of his high-tops on damp pavement, the muggy comb of wind through his hair, the weight of the bookbag on his shoulder. Pushing into superspeed on the freeway and on non-walking roads didn't help his dissociative state; instead it made the world feel more dreamy and surreal.

He arrived at the L-shaped boarding house as the last red curl of a dying sun circled the horizon. While trying to sober  enough to function, he picked his way over scrubby and glass-filled lawn to the sliding glass back-door that lead to the kitchen, noticing that it was cracked open a good half a foot. _Great security system, guys._

Letting himself in, he made a show of shutting and latching the door, though nobody was around to appreciate his fastidiousness. The kitchen was, as always, a mess, leaving Pietro to wonder if there were ever any actual adults around, or if this whole place was just some errant boy’s Pleasure Island.

Lance’s room was empty, as were three nigh-identical bedrooms. He then passed the laundry/mud room and,  attracted by the sound of voices, found a sort of entertainment room attached to it, complete with television, shelves of books, a pool table that had seen better days, and a few cardboard boxes of different toys and games. It was there that Pietro finally spotted Lance in a puppy-pile of boys, watching television and bickering.

Seeing Lance like this waged havoc on Pietro's already fried mind. It was like seeing a teacher at the grocery store, or a rabbi buying underwear. There wasn't anything inherently _wrong_ with it, but the context felt off. These boys claimed bites of ownership over Lance’s life. Knew him in ways Pietro never would. Was Pietro special to him at all, or was he just another dog in the pack?

He stared at the scene for a long time: long enough for the television program to go to commercial. As if on cue, the boys immediately began to shift and stir.

"I'm hungry," one complained.

"You just ate, fatty," another snapped.

There was laughter and shoving and swearing. Lance, all lazy canid strength, rolled his shoulders as he attempted to stand. "Whoever's on my back needs to get off now."

"Hey, that's what your mom said last night, too!"

Lance calmly spat into his hand, planted that palm on the jokester’s face, and shoved until he fell over the arm of the threadbare sofa and onto the floor. He then laughed as he was thoroughly, blisteringly cussed out.

He'd never once touched Pietro so roughly. Pietro was relieved and, inexplicably, just the tiniest bit jealous.

"Lance?" Pietro whispered, his voice sounding tinny and too quiet. There was no way he'd be heard over the ruckus--

Lance spun to face the circular entryway where the smaller boy hovered, surprise and joy transforming his cruel smirk into a bright beam. "Tro! The hell are you doing here?"

The warmth thawed the last of the frozen chunks still floating around in the miasma of Pietro's brain. He _sagged_ in sudden, exhausted relief, his back hitting the wall.

"Hi," he said stupidly.

"Aww, it's Lancey's _boyfriend_ ," cooed the one who'd just been shoved. He yelped and rolled out of the way to avoid a barefooted kick to the ribs.

"Alright, everyone out," Lance snapped. "I mean it. Get out."

There was a collective outcry. Someone tried to pull Lance to the floor. He avoided the arms, but a small boy pounced on him from the back of the sofa, knocking him sideways.

The dogpile of scuffling and fists was instantaneous. There were yelps and grunts as the rolling mass collided with the bookshelf, sending paperbacks cascading down. They howled as they then crossed the room, swarming cartoonishly under and over and around the pool table.

Pietro couldn’t keep track of Lance in the bedlam. Eyes huge, he wondered if he was meant to go and find an adult or-- God forbid-- to _participate_. He squawked in alarm and took quick steps back as the barbaric swarm reached his feet.

With a Herculean grunt, Lance clawed and bit his way to the top of the pile, hair a crackling bush around his head. He wrapped thick brown legs around someone's neck, squeezing until his victim’s face went red, then purple, and he pounded the carpet in submission. Only then did Lance release him.

"I win," Lance quipped smugly, panting for breath but looking quite pleased with himself. A double-scratch on his cheek was already beading with blood. "I really don't know what you expected."

"Lance _always_ wins," someone complained, rolling onto his back to pout at the ceiling like he hadn’t just been caught in a murder cyclone.

Lance turned his cocky winner's smile to Pietro as though expecting praise for his victory. Perhaps Pietro would have been more impressed if he could figure out what in God’s name they'd been fighting _for_ . If Lance’s house were a kingdom, it would be a confusing one where all political parties were anarchists and all laws began with _fuck the man_!

Lance stood and, giving the rest of his household a mocking bow, clapping a hand on Pietro’s shoulder to escort him back to his room.

_Am_ I _the prize, then?_ Pietro wondered, so startled he almost laughed. “So, like,” he began as they reached Lance’s room and his feet carried him instinctively up his bunk ladder. “Is there a _reason_ you almost killed that kid, or…?”

Lance, casual as could be, appeared to be in a very good mood. “Who? Oh, Henry? Nah, he’s fine. That was just playing.”

He climbed the ladder after Pietro, and flopped onto his back with a doofy smile still on his blood-streaked face. Pietro, sitting close to the wall, watched him for a moment.

“Why don’t they cut your hair?”

“Mm?” Lance looked at him, upside-down.

“Everyone else here has buzz-cuts. Even Dex.” Though Dex’s was starting to grow out...

“Oh, that. They used to do that to mine, too.”

Based on the length of it, nobody had done so in years. When brushed properly, it hung to his shoulders. Pietro lifted a lock from Lance’s pillow, absently twining it between his fingers. “Why’d they stop?”

Lance's face went a little blank, his lips doing that thing where they tucked up into his mouth. He clearly didn’t want to share this particular tidbit.

Pietro released Lance's hair, shifting his bookbag on his lap, and looked instead at the bedpost. Touching the little _C.P._ carved into the wood by some long-ago Round Table boy, he felt that same dread and fear and misery of his horrible afternoon return to him.

"Are you okay?" Lance rolled onto his side. There was something about Lance's eyes Pietro could never quite grasp, but sometimes, like now, they became too soft to look at. "You haven’t told me why you came over."

Pietro bit his lip. Here, away from the source of his troubles, it all seemed so stupid.

"How about this," Lance decided, after the silence stretched too long to be comfortable. "I'll tell you a secret, and then you tell me one, okay?"

Pietro was instantly wary. He was _made_ out of secrets. If he gave Lance free rein to start unraveling them, who was to say he'd ever stop? "What kind of secret?"

"Whatever you want. It's not like there's rules or whatever."

"There's _always_ rules."

"Fine. You tell me what these rules are, bossy.”

"But it's _your_ game!" At least being frustrated at Lance was better than how he'd been feeling. He considered. "The secret has to be greater than or equal to the value of the other person's secret."

"Oh yeah? And you get to decide the value of my secrets?"

_Humans_. "Obviously. And you have to go first."

Lance reached to play with the fox keychain on Pietro's bookbag, pushing the white fur over its plastic eyes to make it look grumpy.

"Hm." He propped his chin on his fist to consider, and then flashed Pietro a toothy grin. His smiles were coming more frequently lately. "Remember that robot movie they were showing at the park a while ago?"

"The one you said was stupid? Yeah, what about it?"

"I didn't really think it was stupid. I thought it was awesome. I just said it was dumb so you'd think I was cool."

Pietro blinked. One of his silver brows rose. "Lance Alvers, did you _lie_ to me?" He felt something warm tingle in his chest at the mere thought of Lance wanting Pietro to find him cool.

"It's true, it's true. The robots were kickass, and I'm a liar."

"Oh, Lance. You shouldn't have bothered. I'll never think you're cool."

"Hey!" Lance laughed, shoving at Pietro’s foot. "Screw you; I'm great!"

He was. It was terribly annoying.

"Your turn. And make it juicy. That robot thing was good stuff."  Lance waggled his eyebrows until Pietro bit back a laugh. He loved when Lance let go and was funny with him. He never did this with their other classmates. Even with Kitty, he still held some reservations.

_I wish I could keep you._ The words were so close to the surface that Pietro actually felt the shape of them against the back of his lips. He clamped down, horrified at his thoughtlessness. He might not be able to keep Lance, but there were _better_ things in his future!

"The fosters hit me."

Lance blinked.

Pietro blinked, too. That hadn't been what he'd meant to say at all. _Way to completely destroy the mood, moron._

Lance wet his lower lip, asking carefully, "Today, or just. In general?"

Pietro, devoid of anything else to fidget with, twisted his hands in his lap. "Yes. Uh, to both." _Yes, today. Yes, in general._

It had been such a shock when it first happened. Father had never... Not even once... The man seldom even raised his voice. He'd have found it terribly gauche.

Lance sighed. His hand, still on Pietro's ankle, drummed a rhythm against his skin that only he could hear. "I figured. The way you talk about them... Tro, I'm sorry."

He had no reason to be. Lance faced far more intense violence on a daily basis and considered it entertainment. Pietro was a whiny baby to complain.

"Yeah, well, it’s not _that_ often." Suddenly feeling overexposed, Pietro tightened his hold around his legs, relieved and then disappointed when Lance took his hand away. "Your turn."

Lance considered, thinking for a minute. Then he rose onto his knees and stripped off his shirt, turning to show Pietro his back. A long, puckered, hooked white scar slashed his brown skin, starting at his right shoulder and curling to his left hip. Pietro gawked.

"Mom's boyfriend did that," Lance said. There was a quality to his voice that told Pietro he was smiling _,_ if bitterly _._ "I was four. She uh, didn't stop him. Didn't do anything. The police said I was too young to remember it, but I remember. I nearly bled out."

He gave a rough laugh, then turned to face the boggle-eyed Pietro. There were circular marks on his upper arms, too: little round dents like someone had taken a hole-puncher to him.

Seeing where Pietro's gaze had fallen, Lance looked too. "Those? Yeah, those are from the cigarettes. You know what's funny? Any one of those guys might have been my dad."

A sick shudder rose up from Pietro's stomach. He was completely lost for words. He'd _wanted_ Lance to tell him his story, but now that he’d done so, Pietro wished like anything he could unhear it. How could he deny the boy a few secrets now?

_Father, help me. Everything inside me hurts._

"Mine, too." Pietro's voice was hardly a whisper. He couldn't look at Lance. "Father did things to me, too."

He caught a glimpse of Lance's face and hastily backtracked. "Not like, sex stuff. Other stuff."

_Needles and chemicals and lasers and drugs and--_

"I hate everyone," Lance snarled through clenched teeth. His posture mirrored Pietro's. "Everyone. The whole world fucked us, you know that? The whole _goddamn_ world is rotten."

Father felt that way, too. That was why, when it came to be time for the War…

Pietro unfolded himself, his thin legs in their shorts stretching across the bed. It was narrow enough that there was no way to stretch entirely without touching Lance, so he took comfort in the solid contact, trying to resist sneaking curious peeks at Lance’s white stretch-marks and strong arms, the soft curve to his belly.　

"They’re making me go to Christian camp tomorrow," Pietro said after a pause. "The bus leaves in the morning. I'll be gone all summer."

Lance frowned in confusion. "That doesn't even make any sense. You're Jewish, right?"

_"Maybe a little Jesus will help him become more natural,"_ Angus had suggested to Mary when they thought he'd been asleep. They, too, apparently shared his classmates’ opinion that he was gay. It was becoming “a concern _._ ”

"Yep." Pietro popped his lips on the 'p'. Now it was his turn to offer an ironic smile as he parrotted his foster father."They're fixing me, see? Making me _natural_."

"That sounds like some _bullshit_." Lance looked angrier than ever, but this was productive, directed anger. It suited him better. "What time do you have to go?"

"The camp bus is gonna stop by their house around five."

"So just don't be there."

Lance said this easily, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. In hindsight, maybe it was, but Pietro had never openly defied his foster parents before. Father had left him in _this_ city. He was meant to prove his worthiness, right? Wasn't this all some sort of test? To show Father that he could be resourceful, independent and grown up?

"So, what?" Pietro humored him. "Just stay here?"

"Sure, or-- hold up."

Lance jumped from the bunk and thudded out the room, feet loud on the thin floor. He returned, still shirtless, in less than a minute with a laminated paper in one hand, a bruised apple in the other, and another stuffed in his mouth.

He handed both items in his hands to Pietro before hauling himself back up, again foregoing the ladder.

Pietro furrowed his brow as he looked the page over, crunching reflexively into his snack. It was a bus schedule for the month of June, tacky with tape from whatever wall Lance had ripped it from.

"I don't know what this means," he said, looking quizzically into Lance's eager face.

"It means you should go somewhere! With me!"

Lance took an enormously satisfied bite of his apple, devouring it core, seeds, and all, and excitedly waited for Pietro's verdict.

Just like he had been while watching the fight Lance had had with the other boys, Pietro felt both shakenly overwhelmed and a bit out of breath. "We can't just-- where would we even go?!"

Lance's eyes lit up with a pleased gleam. He'd been hoping Pietro would ask.

"Aren't you always bitching about how much you miss big cities?"


	10. Sleeping Beauty

Lance had always been a veritable furnace of body-heat. Despite his bunk's proximity to the uncovered window, sleep in summertime was a sweaty thing.

When Dex's watch beeped at three that morning, Lance prised open gritty eyes to find the glass watch face steamed over from humidity and Pietro's back, pressed up against his chest, positively soaked through with sweat.

Alarmed, Lance nudged the boy's feverishly-hot cheek with his nose. "Tro," he whispered. " _ Tro _ ..."

Pietro didn't respond. Lance sat up, taking his bony shoulders and giving them a little shake, blowing cool air onto the bridge of his nose. It took longer than expected for muzzy blue eyes, illuminated violet by the neon-red laundromat sign across the street, to flutter open.

"Lancelot? I don't... I don't feel so..."

Lance’s white t-shirt that Pietro wore was near transparent with sweat.  _ Shit.  _ Had they boiled his brain during their nap? Lance was feeling almost woozy himself.

Pulling off his tangled Walkman headphones (it had died while they slept while their heads pressed close on the pillow to listen), Lance hopped from the bed as quietly as possible to avoid waking the others.

"Come on," he whispered. "Let's get you outside."

Pietro attempted to follow him down the ladder. Usually he was fluid and graceful in movement; tonight he fell like a sack of turnips and was caught over Lance’s shoulder with a muffled grunt .

"You can put me down," he mumbled blearily when Lance carried him from the room, but made no other protest as they tiptoed through the boarding house to the comparatively cool breeze just outside the door.

"Wait here," Lance instructed, setting him down as gently as he could in a patch of purple sage by the curb. "I'll be right back; just gotta get our stuff."

"Water?" Pietro requested, the focus returning slowly to his eyes. He pinched the collar of his shirt and flapped it, fanning air onto his neck.

"Yeah, that too."

Lance hurried back to the bedroom, pulling on a t-shirt and cutoff jeans in the darkness, slipping his bare feet into sneakers. He grabbed their pre-packed bookbags and popped fresh batteries into his Walkman before creeping out.

It wasn't the first time he'd snuck out at night. Heck, he wasn't the first Round Table boy to sneak out  _ that  _ night. As he stood filling a jar with water at the kitchen sink, a voice in the dark made him jump, sloshing liquid over his arm.

"Saw your boyfriend outside."

Lance spun, eyes huge in the dark, to see a slumped figure at the kitchen table that had not been there two minutes prior.

"Dex?!"

"Hey, asswipe."

There was a click of a lighter. The cherry of his cigarette was the brightest thing in the room as the older teen inhaled. Something was off about his face.

When Lance set his jar down on the rim of the sink and reached for the light switch, Dex exhaled dual lungfuls of smoke. "Don't, kid. I'm not lookin' too pretty right now."

"Did you get beaten up?!"

Lance had yet to meet anyone who could beat Dex up. The concept was positively absurd. But Dex just grunted and rested his chin gingerly on his hand. He'd been acting weird since summer began. Cagey. But Lance had been too caught up with Pietro and their juvenile gambling ring and passing the eighth grade to think much on it.

Cautiously, he approached the table. The smell of Camels was so strongly associated in his mind with this boy-- with safety, companionship, brotherhood-- that he couldn't help but be falsely comforted by it now. If Dex was smoking, he couldn't be too badly off, right?

"Where y'all sneaking off to?" Dex asked tiredly when their knees brushed.

There was no point in lying. "Chicago. Just for the day."

"Mm. You just gonna walk to the Greyhound? That’s what, ten, fifteen miles away?"

"We were gonna catch the city bus and take it to the station." It'd be a miracle if they made it in time, but they had to try.

"Don't bother." There was a rustle, a groan (of pain?) and then a jingle as keys hit the table. "Take the Jeep."

"You're shitting me. To  _ Chicago _ ?"

Sure, Dex had taught him to drive circles around empty lots, but Lance had never driven on an open road before. Not only was it illegal, it was also likely impossible.

"Don't be stupid. Just to the Greyhound. I'll pick it up later. Here, for your trip..."

He again reached into his pocket and deposited a wad of cash by the keys. It was held together by a rubber band. Lance couldn't see too well just then, but could tell it was a pretty substantial bundle.

"What the hell? Are you dealing for someone, or…?"

Without warning, Dex grabbed the front of Lance's shirt and dragged him within an inch of his face. This close, Lance could smell blood under all the smoke. "Hey!"

"Don't forget." Dex's voice was oddly, bizarrely tender, but he didn't sound at all drunk. "You're my kid. I don't give a fuck who your daddy really is. You're mine. I chose you. Blood ain't got shit on choice."

Lance blinked rapidly. This sounded absurdly close to an  _ I love you,  _ and that was the one truth they never, ever said aloud.

"You're scaring me," he admitted, because it was dark. Because it was Dex.

The hand on his shirt rose to grip his chin, giving it a playful shake. "Never mind. Go show your card-counting boyfriend a good time. I'd better not see your ass back home til tomorrow night, but don't make me come lookin' for you."

"He's not my--"

"I don't care. Have fun. Kiss someone. Get high. Start a fight. Whatever. Just..."

His voice broke. He touched his forehead to Lance's shoulder. He was  _ shaking,  _ despite the obvious smile in his voice. Lance went still as a prey animal.

"I'm not leaving with you being weird like this. What’re you on?"

As abruptly as he’d hauled him close, he gave Lance a rough shove back, forcing both the keys and money into his hands as he did so. "I mean it, Lance. Go."

He  _ never  _ used Lance's first name, either.  _ Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Something is wrong. _

But he'd told Lance to go, and the thought of exploring a new city with that boy outside was calling to his soul. He  _ wanted  _ to  _ go _ .

Dex would be fine. He was just a little high and moody, was all.

Turning warily from the table, Lance found the jar of water. "Okay. Um. Thank you." He forced himself to touch Dex's back in goodbye as he passed him for the door, but paused when his palm met the door’s cool brass handle. "Dex? I _  am _  your kid."

The grin was back in Dex's voice, and Lance instantly felt a million times better about the whole situation. "You're goddamn right you are. Remember to drive it like you stole it."

“Five miles under the speed limit, using my turn-signal, and not attracting any attention?"

Dex's snickering  followed him to the curb. Pietro wasn't where Lance had left him, and Lance felt his heart sink in dread. Had he gotten cold feet and left him behind? Pietro always seemed just a heartbeat away from running off to places Lance couldn’t follow...

“Boo!”

“ _ Je _ sus, Mary, and Joseph!”

“Aw, and you said you weren’t religious.”

Well, at least Pietro seemed to be feeling better. And he had food. “Where’d you get  _ that _ ?”

Pietro held up the brown fast food bag, displaying the iconic “M” logo. "Well gosh and golly gee, Lance. I can't imagine where."

The nearest McDonald's was miles away. Lance fumbled and nearly dropped the sandwich suddenly tossed his way as Pietro snatched the jar of water from his hand and drained it in one gulp. He then burped so loudly that a neighborhood dog began to bark, and threw the jar to the curb in a tinkle of broken glass.

Lance grinned adoringly, loving this manic energy of Pietro’s he never saw around anyone else. "I'm so proud of you."

"Yeah? You gonna carry me all the way to Chicago, Lancelot?"

Lance's face reddened, and he lightly shoved Pietro's shoulder, laughing. "Shut up and get in the Jeep."

"The Jeep?!"

Pleased to be the shocking one for once, Lance approached the parked vehicle and unlocked it with a grand bow. “Midgets have to ride in the back. The airbags would crush your puny ribs to sand.”

“Then let them be crushed.” Pietro, not questioning whether a fourteen year old should be driving, took this in stride and claimed the passenger's seat like it was his rightful throne. He crossed his legs on the dashboard. When Lance hesitated, Pietro fixed him with a look.

There was no arguing with that look.

Lance sighed in resignation and climbed into the driver's seat, spending so long adjusting the seat and rear-view mirror that Pietro ate his way through two breakfast sandwiches on his own.

“How’d you even pay for that?” Lance asked. Pietro hoarded his half of the gambling money with the ferocity of a mountain lion.

“Who says I paid for it?”

The boy was a mystery inside a riddle. Lance switched the headlights on and slowly, carefully backed away from the curb and all the other Round Table cars, inching his way to the road, intimidated by the power of thousands of pounds of vehicle rumbling around him.

“Gross,” Pietro remarked, reaching for the tape player. Lance slapped his hand away, unable to deal with Dex’s heavy metal just then. “You drive like an old lady.”

"An old lady who's going to get us to the station  _ without _  death and destruction."

"Lame! Where's the fun in that?!"

Lance picked up the pace when they hit a main road, though he still remained five miles under the speed limit despite Pietro's heckling. At twenty past three in the morning, there was hardly any other traffic on the road. Every light he glimpsed in the rearview mirror sent his poor heart into overdrive, but after what seemed like twenty false  _ Cop!  _ heart-attacks, he forced himself to breathe.

At a red light, Pietro frowned and cupped Lance's cheek. Lance tried not to react when a thumb brushed the corner of his mouth.  _ Kiss someone, get high, start a fight... _

"What is it?" he asked when Pietro frowned, scraping his skin with a thumbnail.

"You've got some dried blood on your chin. I don't think it's yours, though."

жж

Pietro’s anxiety rose as time marched onward. It was fun at first, this derring-do with Lance. He felt like a boy in a novel; the kind of boy that had adventures. But the closer they got to the station, the more he began to seriously rethink this slapdash plan.

_ There’s still time to run back to the Henneseys before the Jesus bus arrives… _

They were sure to have noticed his absence by now. They’d be furious. It gnawed at his gut. And, as always it did whenever he came close to running out of the city boundaries, the thought:  _ What if today is the day that Father comes back _ ?

What were the odds of that, though? Father had a war to prepare for. That didn’t happen in just two years. He’d surely be gone for longer than this, right?

Pietro became snappish with nerves as Lance struggled to park the Jeep in a dingy parking garage. He scraped an old Bentley's fender while fumbling the gear-shift stick. " _ Nice _ , Alvers."

"I’ve never done this part before. Let me focus!"

Lance reversed the Jeep and, tongue pinned between his teeth, attempted again to park. This time, the front tires bounced off the curb with enough force that Pietro jerked forward in his seat.

Lance swore, his right arm shooting out instinctively to catch Pietro’s chest and prevent him from hitting the dashboard. "You okay?"

The worry faded from Lance’s face after a heartbeat of exchanged dirty looks. "Just get out and let me do this alone, then. You're stressing me out."

Pietro made a great show of his annoyance, slamming the door and standing outside with his arms folded, glaring. When Lance waved him away, he stalked to the rattly metal elevators.

_ He could still run _ …

And leave Lance here by himself? Lance would be so worried. He'd look everywhere for him with that little wrinkle between his brows. He might assume he'd been kidnapped, or--

“There, see? I told you I could do it without you breathing down my neck.”

They rode down to street-level in the parking garage elevator and then used the crosswalk to reach the Greyhound station in silence.

The large station was largely empty and smelled of urine. Lance didn't react to the stink, so Pietro imitated his stoicism. At the front counter, Lance flashed his bus pass and then pulled a giant wad of cash from his pocket to pay for Pietro. Pietro’s jaw nearly dropped.

The woman behind the counter didn’t immediately take the money. "How old did you say you two were?"

"Sixteen," Lance lied. "My brother and I are going to our dad's house."

He was a bad liar, all shifty eyes and fidgeting hands. He was big, but he still had a baby face, and the two boys couldn't have looked less like siblings if they tried.

Maybe she decided she wasn’t paid enough to care, because after a moment she shrugged and printed their tickets off anyway. “Bus should be here in forty-five.”

“Thank you, miss!” Pietro flashed cherubic dimples her way and snatched for Lance’s hand, shoving it and the cash back into his pocket before any of the creepy old men lounging around the station could catch a glimpse of what they had. He then hauled his companion by the elbow to some seats and pushed Lance into the nearest one.

“Where the hell did you get that?” he hissed anxiously in Lance’s ear. If those were all fifties, then that stack contained four, five hundred bucks, easy.

Lance smirked. “You have your secrets, and I have mine.”

Pietro tried to imagine the trouble Lance might cause if left alone in a city with that kind of money, and sighed in defeat. He was here to stay and damn the consequences.

The bus was surprisingly on time, and as the two boys and the assortment of old men stepped out into the dark to file onto the great, sighing beast, Pietro couldn't help but feel a flutter of excitement. This was, maybe, the first brave thing he'd done in his short life.

They sat together in the back where the increase in stink was in direct proportion to greater privacy.

"Tell me a secret?" he asked impulsively, and Lance made a grumpy face.

"I told the last one."

"Do it anyway?"

Lance considered as the bus rumbled to life. The engine was  _ loud _ . "I was born in Chicago, but I haven't been back since my mom was arrested."

Pietro filed this away, glancing at Lance's face to see if he was at all apprehensive to return to his birthplace. He didn't appear to be so.

Lance nudged him. "Now you."

He could have offered something trite. Heck, he could have lied. How would Lance have known? "My twin sister's name is Wanda," he said instead. There Lance went again, unravelling the core truths that held him together.

"Twin, huh? Older or younger?"

"She's older, by almost twenty minutes." And how she'd loved lording both that and her height over him, though he'd take all the teasing in the world and more just to have her back. "She's fearless. Nobody would ever mess with her."

"Like you?"

Pietro blinked rapidly, wondering if he was being teased now, but there was nothing but sincerity in Lance's eyes. He laughed hollowly. "Fearless? Lancelot, I'm afraid of  _ everything _ ."

He hadn't been able to sleep for weeks after she was taken away, too scared to face the dark without her hand squeezing his.

Lance shook his head disbelievingly. "Not you. You're tough as metal."

_ Metal _ …

“Father’s name is Magnus.” That was almost the truth. Magnus,  _ Magneto _ , were the names he'd taken on for himself. Names that would one day fill history books. He'd been born in 1924 as Erik Lehnsherr. That was a truth Lance couldn't know in the unlikely event that he might hear of a Holocaust survivor who'd gone off the grid sometime in the late fifties.

Lance’s nose wrinkled. “That’s a weird name. And screw him, anyway. He  _ left  _ you.”

“No!” Pietro defended, grabbing onto Lance’s arm before he spoke any more blasphemy. “No, he wasn’t. He didn’t. He’ll come back for us when he’s ready.”

Lance clearly didn’t believe Pietro. Maybe all Round Table boys went through a period of such denial. The difference between their hopeful delusions and Pietro’s conviction, however, was that Pietro  _ knew  _ he was right. He was too useful to leave behind forever.

“You can’t stop him, Lancelot.”

“I can. I will.”

This was dangerous ground to tread on. The look in Lance’s eyes was the same as when he’d been beaten into the mud, or when he kept Pietro from stepping into that ring of mushrooms. This Lance was ready to fight, regardless of odds, regardless of stakes.

“Hey,” Pietro tried to smile, and pointed to his bookbag, groping for distraction. “Did you bring anything we can listen to that  _ isn’t  _ Nirvana?”

It was a near four-hour trip to Chicago. The two started out listening to Lance's music together,  but as the sun rose and illuminated the dingy bus a soft pink, Lance's head fell onto Pietro's shoulder as he drifted off. Pietro tried to keep that shoulder still as he busied himself with extracting his notebook from his bag to catch up on a night’s missed records.

He’d never left anything important out of an entry before, but how could he say, “ _ Dear Father: I'm disobeying the Hennesseys and running off to the city with a human boy _ ?” For the first time since he'd begun keeping these records, he wrote only partial truths.

"Pretty," Lance mumbled. Pietro glanced at him. He was watching Pietro write, his eyes uncomprehendingly following the dots and swirls of German writing as though they were hieroglyphs. He drifted off again between one page-turn and the next.

Watching the scenery pass through the window was a little overwhelming. It’d been too dark for Pietro to see much of anything during the overnight drive with Father from NYC before he was abandoned--  _ set aside _ \--  in an innocuous Deerfield gas station.

"I am going away for a time," Magnus had said in heavily accented English and a tone that left no room for argument. He'd bent and placed both hands on Pietro's shoulders to look him in the eye. "You will behave in a way that upholds our name until I come for you."

And that was that. Pietro, then twelve, hadn't understood what was happening until long after he'd watched his father climb into his rental car and start back the way they’d come. He'd sunk, silent and wide-eyed, between packages of chips and candy, hugging his knees until some employee or other noticed and called the police.

He gave a shudder to chase the unwanted, confusing memories away, making Lance grumble.

Usually Pietro found public transport intolerable. He could outrace even the flashiest of sports cars, after all, so the starting-and-stopping of a bus was akin to torture. This, however, was bearable. Lance’s presence made the world just a little bit more tolerable. Still, it was a relief when the long ride finally reached its destination.

"Alright,  _Dornröschen_ ," Pietro said, jouncing his shoulder. There were the tiniest flecks of gold in Lance's dark eyes; they glinted when they caught the light.

As though Lance had been storing all his energy up for this moment, he bounced to his feet, hauling Pietro off the bus with him.

Once outside the station, Pietro took a deep breath and grinned.The world smelled like gasoline and garbage. There was a light smog overhead in the gray-clouded sky, and office buildings and apartment complexes stood tall as the eye could see. Noisy crowds buffeted them from all sides, causing Lance to redouble his grip on Pietro's hand.

This wasn't home, but it was damn close.

"Alright," Lance said cheerily. "First thing's first. Let's go find a map."


	11. The Windy City

“When I have my own car, I’m taking you here every weekend.”

“Fantastic. I’ve always wanted to know what drowning myself in grease would feel like.”

“Are you _still_ complaining about the pizza? It couldn’t have been _that_ bad. I had to fight you off to get any!”

“Chicago pizza is _inferior_ to New York pizza.”

They were too dirty, too sweaty, too casually dressed to be inside an art institute as fancy as this one, and almost certainly too young. Wary of getting kicked out, they silenced their bickering when a tall employee in a short navy dress passed their way.

Lance's eyes followed the sway of her hips, her legs endless in five-inch heels that tik-tokked on the shiny floor. Pietro watched her, too, trying to mimic his companion’s interest. She was pretty, but he wouldn't have noticed had Lance not done so first.

Then Lance turned back to Pietro and gave a wolfish smirk. " _Inferior_ ," he parodied in a nasally voice, curling his lip in a comedic sneer.

Pietro laughed and shoved at his arm, pleased to have all of Lance's attention to himself once more. He squawked an overloud protest as he was dragged into a headlock.

Lance, pointedly ignoring his thrashing, admired the paintings on the wall before them. In the same way that his fingers tapped the notes when he listened to music, here his mouth moved unconsciously to match the expressions of the people in the art they studied. It was amusing to watch that generous mouth form a silent scream; a scathing glare; a gentle kiss...

Pietro realized he'd stopped flailing at the same time Lance did. They met eyes.

"I'm bored," he declared, ducking free of the headlock. "Let's do something else."

He'd said this at least a dozen times today. Lance, bless him, didn't question it, following Pietro’s lead with dogged loyalty. He hadn't so much as whined once when Pietro grew tired of the movie they'd caught the first half of in a theater.

"I can't sit still," Pietro had confessed, head low, when the cackling scientist on the big screen injected an unknown substance into a bound man's arm. Lance had been enjoying the movie up to that point, but one glimpse at Pietro's face had convinced him to grab their popcorn and trade the cool darkness of the theater for warm June sunshine.

" _You are so obnoxious_ ," Mary had informed him, time and again. " _Nobody is ever going to want you around with that lack of focus_."

Maybe she wasn’t as right about everything as she thought she was.

Now Pietro watched Lance lope around the art institute’s gift shop in exactly the same way he’d wandered the outside mall: he’d find something interesting, lift it, check the price tag, and then set it down quickly with an alarmed look on his face.

He spent a long time admiring a pair of fingerless gloves before regretfully putting those down, too.

He returned to Pietro’s side after a casual look around the store, a question in his eyes. “Think we’ve got time to hit Navy Pier before we have to catch the bus home?”

The reminder sent a sick pang through Pietro’s belly. Of course they’d have to go home _._ There really was nothing for it, but he wanted to prolong this respite from hell as long as possible.

“If we take a taxi.” They’d mostly been commuting by bus or by foot all day; taxis were pretty damn costly. But as they did currently have a _lot_ of money…

Lance hesitated, about to reject the idea before meeting Pietro’s sparkling, hopeful eyes. He sighed, then smiled indulgently. “I guess we gotta, huh? I heard there was a rollercoaster.”

Tucking down the new lump in his pocket, Pietro followed Lance from the gift shop. When they were again subjected to the crowd outside, Pietro took Lance’s callused hand, lacing their fingers. Lance gave Pietro’s hand a reassuring squeeze, and Pietro felt his own heart contracting almost painfully right alongside it.

Hailing a taxi was harder than it looked on TV. Pietro couldn’t remember Father ever having trouble with it, but nobody wanted to stop for two scruffy kids. Eventually, though, they were grinning in the backseat of a yellow cab, chasing the sunset to the pier.

They pressed their faces to the window as they drove, admiring the ever-busy city with all its clubs and shops and bustle. It was interesting, to think that such a city had created Lance.

The teenager pointed solemnly to the high-rise apartments that overlooked a colorful shopping center. “Lets move into those.”

“Me and you?” Pietro grinned ear-to-ear, tickled pink by the idea.

“Why not? You can be a famous actor. I’ll be a rockstar. We’ll make it work.”

They spent the rest of the ride fantasizing about this life (The mangoes they’d buy, the pizza they wouldn’t. The matching motorcycles they’d drive. They’d either have two dogs or four cats...) until finally the candy-colored lights of carnival rides reflected off Lake Michigan’s calm surface.

“Ohmygosh,” Pietro breathed, bouncing on his heels and half-dragging Lance from the cab as the older boy struggled to tip the driver. In his excitement, Pietro forgot to slow his speech down to human levels of comprehension. “ _LanceLanceLance there’re_ two _rollercoasters…”_

Pietro nearly wrenched Lance off his feet and Lance’s startled laughter mingled with the calliope music, the enticing smell of sunscreen and salt and popcorn in the air. Pietro thought his heart might burst from joy.

жж

Exhausted, the two slept for most of the ride back to Deerfield, flopped against each other in their seats. Pietro, a repeat insomniac, was beginning to notice an alarming pattern to his sleeping better and easier when Lance was around.

An old lady working on a crossword puzzle woke them when they reached Deerfield's station and, yawning and stretching, they trudged out into the late-night air. Deerfield had a scent; something Pietro had forgotten about after living there so long. It was a little like moss after rain.

Lance explained that they wouldn't be able to take the Jeep home, that he'd left the keys under the floor mat for one of Dex's friends to pick up. Though Pietro feigned irritation, he was grateful for the delay.

Unhurried, they walked towards a bus stop that was nothing more than a little blue bench outside a convenience store. One point in Deerfield's favor: the stars. There weren't nearly so many stars visible in the big cities.

"Tell me a secret?" Pietro asked, looking at Lance's hand as they walked and resisting the compulsion to take it again. "You still owe me one."

Lance turned to look at him, studying his face carefully under a streetlight. Then he smiled. "You're damn cute when you're happy."

Pietro blinked, feeling his face warm. He didn't know whether to be furious or thrilled. Was Lance making fun of him? "That does _not_ count! That's my secret, about me. You can only tell your own."

Lance shrugged, indifferent, unapologetic. "You never specified _that_ in your rules."

"Fine then. I'm not going to give you your present." Pietro sniffed haughtily.

"Hey, wait a second--"

Pietro, laughing, darted ahead of him. He ran, but not fast enough to blur. He kept it within the realm of human possibility, just out of reach of Lance's grasping hands, and reached the bus stop first, standing proudly atop the plastic bench as though it were a mountain. "Safe!"

Lance sneered at him and sat on the bench, puffing for breath. Pietro happily sneered back, then pulled a bundle from his pocket and dropped it onto Lance's lap before sinking, cross-legged, down beside him.

Startled, Lance held up the stolen fingerless gloves. "Is this my present?"

"Yep. They're tacky and nonfunctional, like you!"

Lance was perhaps the only person in the world who could flip someone off while still looking utterly, blissfully happy. He ripped off the price tag and tugged the gloves on. Nonfunctional as they may be, they still looked good on him. In a greasy-grunge-boy sort of way.

"You could say thank you," Pietro pointed out.

Lance shook his head. "You shouldn't thank fairies. They might think you're saying that you owe them, and then the next thing you know, they're keeping you like some sort of slave."

"You calling me a fairy, Alvers? Wouldn't be the first time someone did, I guess."

Lance looked stricken. "Not like that, Tro. You know I don't give a shit about who you're into."

"I like girls!"

"Great! I don't care!"

Lance and Pietro locked eyes and then, as if on cue, fell into awkward laughter. "Thanks for the gloves, Tro," he said sincerely, scuffing his heels. "They're great. You're great."

Pietro cocked his head, smiling wickedly. "You aren't afraid I'll use my evil fairy magic on you now that you've thanked me?"

Lance shrugged. "You’re already plotting my doom, remember? It’s too late for me anyway."

"If it makes it fair," Pietro said, after a pause. "I owe you a thank you for kidnapping me, Lancelot. I would have gone crazy if you hadn't pulled the dumb-noble-hero act and saved my ass."

Lance smiled, considered for a brief pause, then glanced Pietro's way. "Take me to New York someday, okay? Then we'll call it even. No enslavement necessary."

It was too easy to laugh along. To agree with a nod, even though he already knew he'd never be able to hold up that end of the bargain. It was nice to imagine, for however briefly.

The bus that pulled to their stop was much smaller and rickitier than the Greyhound, but at least it smelled less like urine. The exhausted driver took one glance at Lance's bus pass and waved him on, seemingly indifferent to Pietro's presence. Once more, they took a carpeted bench-seat in the back.

"Do me a favor?" Lance muttered when they were settled, when the near-empty bus began driving again. He handed Pietro the thick wad of cash he'd been carrying all day. "Keep this with you? If you can put it in the jars, great. If not, I'll come get it soon. I just don't want to take it home."

Pietro, startled at being trusted with so much, tucked it deep into his bookbag, hiding it in the stitching where it wouldn't be found without a thorough search. "Where did you get it?"

In a whisper, Lance relayed the odd experience with Dex.

"He's dealing," Pietro said confidently. There were a lot of dealers in Deerfield, especially around Lance's part of town. Pietro suspected meth. Very few meth dealers bothered to be subtle about it. Half the time, the local cops ran with the pack.

"I know." Lance bit his lip, troubled. "I _know_. But there isn’t a hell of a lot I can do about it.”

From the front of the bus, the only other passenger stood and walked their way. Paranoid that they’d been overheard, they both stared guiltily up at him.

"What are two young things like you doing all by yourselves at this time of night?" A high, reedy voice from a short, nicely dressed, middle-aged man built like Santa Claus approached them. "Aren't your parents with you?"

He looked at them in concerned sympathy, eyes twinkling warmly, seeming for all the world a kindly teacher or librarian or crossing guard who only wanted to help.

Lance inexplicably stiffened against his side. Pietro felt a strong arm wind his waist. He shot Lance a questioning look, but Lance's unblinking gaze was fixated on this newcomer.

"You two look like such _nice_ boys," the man continued, smiling brightly at them with yellowed teeth. "Especially you, sweetheart." His eyes travelled pleasantly over Pietro's slight frame and wide-set blue eyes. "What pretty hair..."

He reached out a hand. Pietro, startled, flinched away from it.

"We aren't," Lance interrupted shortly, knocking the man's hand aside before he could touch them. He was stiff, violence and tension written in every line of his posture. His arm around Pietro tightened until it hurt. "He isn't sweet. We're the furthest thing from nice you'll _ever_ find."

Pietro had never seen Lance like this before. Veins corded in his neck. Murder blossomed in his eyes. It was exhilarating to witness. It was terrifying and terrific, both.

Evidently, the man had also come to the same conclusion. His friendly smile faded, but did not disappear. He shifted his weight as the bus thumped over a pothole. "I'm just looking out for you," he explained winningly. "It's just not safe for children to travel all alone at night. Why don't you let me sit with you and see you safely home?"

Again, he reached out to them, using both hands as though to pull them into a paternal embrace. He hadn't quite completed the gesture when Lance surged to his feet like a lunging dog, teeth bared, and the man took two stumbling steps back.

"Come near us again and I'll _fucking_ kill you, do you understand me?!" Lance demanded, the gold in his eyes flashing something fierce as his fists clenched at his sides.

Pietro felt his jaw drop, his eyes boggle. His fight-or-flight response, ever tuned to flight, was making his heart hammer. It was impossible to run _anywhere_ in a bus. He was trapped. Claustrophobia and anxiety began to rear its ugly head...

"Okay!" the man held both hands up, warding Lance off as the tall teenager got up in his face. "I was only offering to help, but I can see that it's not wanted."

"You're damn right you're not wanted," Lance growled, and lunged again for the man as he attempted to scuttle back to the front of the bus. Only when he was seated directly behind the driver did Lance sit back down.

"Lance?" Pietro asked, wondering if he needed to be scared. Despite his pounding heart, the claustrophobia strangling his lungs, he didn't _feel_ scared. Not yet.

Lance didn't seem to want to tear his eyes off the man. He seared his gaze on the back of that neck as though he could snap it with a look. But when Pietro jostled his shoulder, he reluctantly turned his attention back to his companion.

Pietro watched the murderous rage visibly fade from his eyes, to be replaced only by tired concern.

"Are you okay?" Lance asked quietly, brushing Pietro's cheek with a knuckle. Of course Pietro was okay. The man hadn't touched them with anything more than his eyes... Understanding the situation at last, Pietro looked away, reddening in shame. He'd frozen up, useless as ever.

" _Stop behaving like such a victim, Pietro. Maximoffs are never victims. A Maximoff never cries."_

How to say thanks for something so humiliating? How to acknowledge that it'd happened at all?

Lance pulled him close, holding him like he was some precious thing, and for the first time in Pietro's life, such an action didn't feel in the least patronizing. He turned his face into Lance's shoulder, breathing in his familiar campfire smell until the anxiety died away.

 _Boys don't do this_ . He could almost hear Angus' reprimanding voice in his mind as Lance's big hand splayed flat on his back. _This isn't normal_ . You _aren't normal._

Could that man tell that Pietro wasn't normal, too? Was it just written on his skin in permanent marker for all the world to read?

“ _Dudes don't bleach their hair in Deerfield, gypsy fag.”_

Pietro closed his eyes tightly, gripping Lance's sleeve with all his strength. _Don't let go_ , he thought miserably. _Don't you ever let me go, Lancelot._

The unsettling Santa man exited the bus several stops before theirs, and then a new wariness bloomed in his stomach. It was almost two in the morning, and now they were almost home, their adventure reaching an end.

Pietro tapped his foot on the floor so quickly that his knee blurred and he felt friction heat the inside thigh of his jeans. He'd worn holes through fabric before, fabric smoking, burning himself. _Can't let Lance see that..._

"I'm scared," he admitted with a slightly manic laugh. "What if they won't keep me after this?"

"Then you'll stay with me," Lance replied confidently. This was, surprisingly, a calming thought. Becoming a Round Table boy had once seemed like the worst thing that could happen to him, but now...

Exiting the bus and walking the streets together felt a little like walking a pirate’s plank. "You don't have to come with me," he told Lance. "You'll just have to get on another bus to go back to your place after."

"Don't care." Lance seized his hand. Pietro felt the pleather of his glove, reassuringly smooth on his palm. "I'm with you, okay? You and I are... You know."

“I know.”

It was still getting harder to breathe when they reached his block. It became damn near impossible when he saw the lights on in the Hennessey's home, the unmistakable black-and-white cop car parked in the driveway like an orca awaiting a seal.

Pietro faltered, a whine caught in his throat. "I can't, Lance, I can't do it. Take me home, please, _bitte,_ hilf mir..."

"It'll be okay," Lance promised Pietro, squeezing his hand. "Trust me. _Trust_ me;  I'm gonna make it all okay."

Pietro could do nothing but nod, clinging to Lance's arm as they walked past the car and up the short, slanted driveway.

"Trust me," Lance whispered a third time, smiling gently at him before raising his voice to a roar, loud enough to be heard from inside the house. "I won’t ask again! Give me the bag, you little _punk_!"

He shoved Pietro into the garage door hard enough to make the metal rattle, but cradled a hand around the back of his head, protecting it from the impact. He then cocked a fist back, aiming a punch for Pietro's shocked face just as the front door flew open.


	12. Growing Pains

_August 1999_

“So you were _arrested?_ ” Kitty asked, aghast, both hands clapped to her mouth. “And _that’s_ why I haven’t seen either of you all summer?”

The two friends were seated shoulder-to-shoulder with bare feet dabbling in her swimming pool. Lance shushed her, glancing anxiously towards the house. "Keep it down. Your parents probably wouldn't like to hear that. And it was only for a few hours. I've gotten worse for shoplifting."

"You've _stolen_ things?! Lance!"

"Not everybody gets the world handed to them like you do, _princess_ ," he snapped with more vitriol than he'd intended. He regretted it when her lips pinched, stung by his tone. "Sorry."

"No, you're right." she lifted her feet from the saltwater pool, ankles dripping. In her coral boardshorts, her legs were slender and lightly furred with downy fuzz. "I'm sorry, too. I just… I can’t believe you let them think you forced Pietro to run away with you. You would never...”

She'd grown a few inches taller over the summer. A little curvier, too, though that was something Lance was trying _desperately_ not to be caught noticing. Kitty was his only friend, aside from Pietro. There was no sense in making things weird. Not when she was so far out of his league she might as well be on Mars.

Lance shrugged, uncaring. “I’m always gonna be the bad kid to them, and this way it’s not his fault. Nobody expects better from me anyways, so. It’s fine.”

A tap on the window caused them both to jump and look back at the house. Teresa waved a wooden spoon at them.

"You kids are supposed to be working!" she called, chiding but not angry. Lance hopped to his feet and bent to collect the box of decorations at his side.

"Sorry, Teresa!"

She blew them a kiss and returned to crafting a three-tiered birthday cake covered in pink frosting seashells.

Kitty and Lance resumed the work of decorating Kitty's vast backyard. The pavilion, the trees, the fence, and all the tables received their fair share of streamers, crepe flowers, and hanging paper lanterns.

"I can't reach," Kitty complained, struggling to hang the final lantern on a tall branch of the box elder tree. "And there's a big bald spot. Can you get me a chair?"

Ducking, Lance hoisted her onto his shoulders, relishing in her squeal when her heels dug into his armpits. " _Lance_ …!"

He'd spent the majority of his boring summer weight-lifting with Dex's equipment, determined to achieve something impressive before high school. The effects were just starting to show. He felt quite smug at Kitty's red-faced surprise.

"Go on," he goaded playfully. "Fix the bald spot."

Kitty hesitated, then gripped the strap of his striped tank with one hand, affixing the lantern to the desired branch with the other. He held her legs for balance until she was finished.

Then, gripping both of her knees securely, he turned and casually walked the both of them back to the pool.

"L _aaaaa_ nce," Kitty called down warningly. "What are you d--"

With a wicked grin, he flung her into the deep end of the pool in a mighty wave of slapping water. He was cackling by the time she surfaced, sputtering as she treaded water.

"You jerk!"

"Aw, you love me."

She punched the water, growling. "Now I'm gonna have to _shower_ again! You _jerk_!"

This stumped him. "Wait, why? It's a pool party."

"You're a boy. Of course you wouldn't understand."

While he stood at the edge of the pool trying to work out what in the heck _that_ meant, a voice behind him made him jump.

"Having fun without me?"

He saw only the briefest flash of silver before he was shoved hard in the back, toppling into the water himself.

When he kicked to the surface, he saw Pietro standing smugly at the edge of the pool. From this angle, it was clear to see that he, too, had grown in their weeks apart, though not as dramatically as Kitty had.

His fox's smile hadn't changed a bit, though.

Lance rolled onto his back, lazily spitting a geyser of salty water up at Pietro to disguise his enormous smile. It'd been too damn long since he'd last seen the boy; he'd been grounded since their illicit trip to Chicago. "You made it! I was wondering when you were gonna ditch the fosters."

The guitar pick Lance kept on a shoelace around his neck between lessons floated out from underneath his tank top, casting a heart-shaped shadow over his chest. He kicked his feet lazily, more graceful and at ease in water than he'd ever be on land.

Kitty, sensing the opportunity for revenge, swam like a silent shark underneath him and pushed off hard from the rocky bottom, headbutting his spine. He rolled, laughing, and chased her to the shallow end, but she was too fast.

"Safe!" she called, panting as she hauled herself inelegantly from the water. "You can't get me!"

Pietro, quick as a whip, darted a lap around the pool to catch her waist. "But _I_ can. You want the birthday princess back, Captain Alvers? You'll have to fight me. I'm holding her ransom!"

"Not if I fight you first!"

Kitty and Pietro were evenly matched in strength, but the smooth bottoms of his sneakers had less traction than her bare feet on the wet concrete. She dragged him with ease to the collection of pool toys by the fence and bopped him over the head with a foam dolphin. "En _garde_ , you ruffian!"

"Kick his ass, Kitty!" Lance cheered, grinning like a fool. This was the best. This was what their last summer before high school should have been all along.

"Oh, I _will_ !" Brandishing her dolphin like a sword, Kitty wrestled with the white-haired boy, attempting to knock him into the pool as well. "And then I'm gonna get _you_! There's a new captain on this ship!"

"Not the hair, _not the hair_!" Pietro whined when Kitty wrung her sodden ponytail out on top of his head, flattening his perfectly gelled bangs. "You’re dead to me, Kätzchen!"

Lance howled with laughter, braying so hard that his stomach ached. _Oh, I love you,_ he thought, and then sobered at the softness of it. Did boys his age normally feel so tender towards their friends? Boys on TV-- heck, the other Round Table boys, too-- never seemed to feel much of anything at all. Lance couldn't seem to _stop_ feeling.

Sometimes he had the distinct impression that everything he did, everything he thought _,_ was just plain wrong. All-around abnormal.

"Oh, brother." Carmen Pryde, arms laden with a crate of bottles, approached the Tiki Bar and began to set up his wares. "Starting the party early, I see?"

"Lance threw me in the pool!" Kitty wailed. "And Pietro's trying to kidnap me! And... And you _can't_ wear that Hawaiian shirt to my party, daddy, it's awful."

Pietro took advantage of Kitty's momentary distraction to steal her dolphin and push her back into the pool. As she fell, screeching, arms pinwheeling, she just managed to catch hold of his wrist to drag him in after her.

In the tremendous splashing that followed, Lance burst into watery applause.

жж

Lance was quickly discovering that, despite the enormous table of food, he absolutely hated parties. If it'd been for anything other than Kitty's birthday, he'd have refused it on principal.

It wouldn't have been so bad if there weren't other people around. He wasn't much a fan of other people.

The Pryde's spacious property was overrun with teenagers from all grades of high school; they filled the pool, lined up at the Tiki bar, had started a game of volleyball at the net. Inside there were games; DDR and Boppit and more things Lance hadn't even heard of.

He barely knew anyone there. By face, sure, but not by name. He was the only Round Table boy. Kitty had disappeared into the house to change clothes. Betty Winters, a dark-haired girl Pietro sometimes palled around with in drama club, had flagged him down. He'd sauntered to her and in a moment the two were laughing over some inside joke, her head tipped back, his eyes warm.

He spent some time diving into the deep end of the pool, pleased when he sank, admiring the ever-changing lights they'd put at the bottom to cast the water different colors, but he couldn't hold his breath forever. He surfaced and climbed out, his nervous pack instincts forcing him close to the only other person he was friendly with.

"Oh, Lance!" Carmen smiled when he approached. "I was hoping you'd stop by. Here."

He shoved a paper cup smelling of artificial pineapple into Lance's hand. "What do you say we add some music to the party?"

Lance, nervously shoveling Carmen’s Italian ice into his face, cocked his head and pointed to the speakers still blasting the sugary pop music Kitty favored. Carmen grinned, bent, and stood with a guitar case in hand. “I meant _real_ music.”

Lance reddened and shook his head in a frantic no. "Not _here_ \--"

He'd sooner swallow his own tongue than play in front of his peers. His lessons with Carmen were infrequent and casual. He was getting better, sure, but...!

"Where's your courage, man?!"

There was no stopping the madman. He pushed the leather handle of a case into Lance's hand. "I'm playing whether you like it or not, kiddo. If you do it too, Kitty probably won't even get all that mad at me."

They sat together on a large, decorative rock, Lance's face flaming so hot it hurt _,_ feeling as though every one of their peers was looking right at him. So long as he didn't look up at the crowd, didn't confirm this fact, he'd be okay.

Carmen was already dropping the E-string, so Lance hastened to imitate him, his salty fingers slippery. He untied the shoelace around his neck, letting the pick fall into his palm.

He held the acoustic on his lap, touching the cold metal strings, and felt his heart calm at its reassuring weight. Talking to people at the party was hard, but this? This, he could do. Lance’s eight fingertips had developed calluses, as had the sides of his thumbs; it was no longer agony to play for extended periods of time.

Carmen began first, strumming with a confidence that Lance feared he might never feel. Lance jumped in, feeling like he'd thrown his own stomach across the backyard for all the swooping inside it. People were _looking_ at them, oh shit; he ducked his head until his wet hair obscured his eyes. Like blinders on a horse, it soothed him.

He followed Carmen's lead like he always did at the beginning of a session, weaving chords at random between and around the other man's, harmonizing until it sounded just right. Carmen had long admired his musical intuition, challenging him by playing jumpy and discordant, unpredictable bars. Once Lance found his footing, though, he wasn't so easily shaken. He was able to adapt to even the choppiest of riffs.

"Don't make me sing," he muttered from the corner of his mouth, and Carmen smiled. Sometimes, they did sing (once, humiliatingly, with Kitty listening), but Lance knew trying to do so with an audience would choke him up.

Carmen shifted again, turning the pot, and suddenly the familiar chords of Barenaked Ladies's "Brian Wilson" emerged. Lance grinned, appreciating the challenge. Carmen had no rhyme or reason to his impromptu medleys. It kept Lance on his toes as they cycled through everything from "Tears in Heaven," "Good Riddance," and-- this last one made Lance's heart flutter-- "The Man who Sold the World."

The sound of Carmen playing, along with noise of the rest of the party, gradually faded out until it just was Lance and his guitar. The tightness in his chest loosened. _Calm;_ all was calm. As always when he slipped into this mental zone, he thought only of forests, of does, of fairy rings and tiny purple flowers, his body rocking peacefully.

Lance didn't know how much time had passed, but when he again looked up, peeking through his curtain of hair, he realized that he had amassed a small audience. He froze, a deer in headlights all over again.

"Damn, Alvers," someone mused, and then glanced sheepishly at Carmen. "Uh, I mean. Darn."

Lance felt his blush flare anew. Carmen was looking at him with a fierce pride that raised a lump in Lance's throat. He'd already put his own guitar away, so Lance hastily handed him his instrument and stood.

"Bathroom," he announced, pushing between Stacy Moreau and Veronica Blagden as he half-ran for the house. He hid in the tiny guest bathroom-- the one upstairs that most partygoers wouldn't know about-- as long as he dared, until (he hoped) people had moved on.

Returning outside as quietly as he could, he was relieved to spot Pietro at one of the tables by the barbeque. He'd begun a game of cards-- not for money, thank God; even _he_ wasn't ballsy enough to start up a real game with Carmen around-- and sat with an arm slung casually over Betty Winters's bare waist, tangling his fingers in the dangling strings of her bikini top. No doubt he was whetting the gamblers’ appetite for a new school year, the clever fox.

Lance was just about to approach to ask to be dealt a hand, when Pietro set down a fan of cards that made half the table groan in dismay. How he was managing to win even when he had no shirt to hide his extra cards, Lance didn't know.

And then Betty caught Pietro's chin and tilted his face towards hers.

Lance blinked, slowly, as Pietro smirked and _kissed_ her for everyone to see.

Someone wolf-whistled; another player at the table gagged. Lance didn't realize he was staring until Pietro's eyes opened. Though Lance was half-hidden by the hanging plants of the porch, the two locked eyes. Pietro's hand lazily travelled up Betty's side. Heat flooded Lance's face and chest. Surprise and dismay kept him rooted to the spot, until--

"There you are! I've been looking all over for you." Kitty's voice broke the spell. Relieved beyond belief for the interruption, Lance turned to face her.

The birthday girl had changed into a white one-piece with a purple wrap skirt that swished at her ankles and a fake orange hibiscus flower that speared through her ponytail. Her toes were painted a bright orange to match the flower. On her longest toe she wore the fake opal ring Lance had gifted her with.

Lance, brain still scrambled from what he’d witnessed, mentally stalled yet again. Kitty’s little smile made his heart do a crazy figure eight.

"You look pretty," he said, when he could again manage to form words. It hadn't been what he'd meant to say at _all_ and, mortified, he shut his jaw with a click before he said something even more incriminating.

Kitty, oblivious to his inner turmoil, spun so that her skirt billowed outward, filmy and voluminous. "Right?" she agreed. "I love this thing. It's great."

That hadn't been what Lance meant, but he was pleased to have made her happy. "Hell yeah!"

Someone knocked into Kitty as he raced into the house, and Lance hastened to catch her as her balance wobbled. Her little hand on his bare ribs was all he could think about for an electric moment.

"Okay, rude!" she called over her shoulder after the running partygoer, then smiled up at Lance. "Thanks. Are you _always_ this warm? Holy cow, you're burning up." She pressed her second hand to his torso beside the first. "Jeez! Do you have a fever?"

He laughed, a nervous little sound bubbling up from his throat. He felt frozen to the spot, unsure what to do with his hands or feet or tongue or soul. "Um. Uh. Y-yeah. Yes, and yeah. Wait, no! No fever. That's just me. Warm and sweaty.” Oh, God. Had he just told Kitty he was sweaty?

She was so _cute_ when she laughed, all sun-freckled with her snub nose and dark-lashed eyes. He'd always known she was cute, but he'd never felt this dumb about it before. Was this what Pietro felt like all the time? Utterly incapable of shutting up? Maybe kissing was a better idea; he probably couldn't say stupid things while kissing someone.

The thought turned his attention back towards the gaming table. Pietro, no longer kissing Betty, had again turned his attention back to the game, though she was now sitting on his lap. Lance felt inexplicably relieved.

Kitty had just linked her arm through his when two girls appeared at the sliding glass door that led into the kitchen.

Heather something-or-other and reheaded Jackie Smith regarded the pair impassively. In middle school they and Kitty been nigh-inseparable: a playful Cerberus consumed with all things Lisa Frank and gel pens and LipSmackers.

"Oh my _gosh_!" Kitty squealed, releasing Lance to leap at her friends, enveloping them in her arms and her excited babble. "You guys! I didn't think you'd come! I haven't talked to you in forever. Hi, hi! How has your summer been? Didn’t your parents take you to Hawaii, Hey-hey?! So tan! I’m jealous!"

“Hey-hey” gave Kitty's back a gentle pat, but Jackie stood still as a stone statue, green eyes locked challengingly on Lance.

"We're not staying," she said. "We just came by to drop off your present. We bought it _ages_ ago." The _or we wouldn't have bothered_ was not spoken, but implied.

Kitty's smile faltered a little. "Oh... Oh, well that's okay! Hey, my mom wanted to know if your mom would still want to carpool when school starts up again?"

"No." Jackie didn't even try to be coy about it. "Kitty, my mom doesn't like the new friends you're hanging around." Again, her eyes flicked over Lance. "She says I can't be with you if you're with them. That you’ll lead me on a _bad path._ "

It wasn't terribly surprising, really. Lance had heard this song and dance before. _Round Table boys are all on drugs. Round Table boys will hit a girl. Round Table boys will get a girl pregnant and leave her without a second thought._ The fact that the rumors weren't always unfounded did not help matters.

It had never _hurt_ before.

"My mom wants to know," Jackie continued, trampling over  Kitty's stunned silence. "Is what your parents are thinking. That just because your dad is a--"

"Jackie!" Heather gasped, putting a warning hand on the girl's arm. "We promised not to--"

Jackie fell silent, steaming.

Lance knew this wasn't his fight. He didn’t even know _how_ to fight this kind of fight, the kind that was fought with superior glances and unsaid words. But these girls were hurting Kitty, and he couldn't stand it a minute longer. 

"Shut up, Smith," he growled, leaning in to scowl at Jackie. In a moment, her aloof nature evaporated into something else: fear. She was _afraid_ of him. That knowledge should not have filled him with a sense of power, but there was time to feel guilty later. “If you’re going to be an asshole, then just leave. Nobody wants you here. Nobody wants you anywhere.”

His voice was quiet, threatening. Her eyes were huge.

Heather, snatching Jackie’s hand, surged into Lance’s space, brave as a small, yappy dog. She smelled like bubblegum and sunblock. “You can’t _talk_ to us like that!” she gasped, her intonation making this sound like a question rather than an exclamation.

“No? Try me.” He took a step towards her and she flinched back towards the house, pulling Jackie with her.

"Lance?" Kitty's voice wavered with uncertainty. He turned to look at her and saw her expression clouded with both alarm and concern. "Lance, are you okay? Your eyes..."

Had he scared her, too? That felt... less good than scaring Jackie and Heather. He struggled to reign his anger in, feeling a twinge of pain at the base of his skull from the effort. "They need to leave," he told Kitty, his voice lower, rougher than normal.

"We're going," Jackie snapped. Heather pulled on her hand, dragging her closer to the door. Jackie resisted for just a second longer. There was still fear in her eyes, but there was something else, too: concern. "Kitty, if he hurts you--"

"Stop it!" Kitty's cheeks flared red now as she scowled at her former friend. Lance had never heard her speak so harshly before. "Don't say things like that. He's been a better friend to me than you _ever_ have."

 _If he hurts you_.

Was that what they thought? Was that what the school assumed he was doing to Kitty when she joined him, crouched by the trash cans, for lunch? When she sat beside him in remedial English and shared her notes? When he walked her home from school, sometimes stopping in for guitar lessons? Jackie wasn't saying it to be cruel, not anymore. She was saying it because she believed it.

"Goodbye, Kitty," Heather said sadly as Jackie pulled her towards the front door. Melodramatic, perhaps. Their town, their _school_ was just too tiny; there were no real goodbyes in Deerfield.

Kitty watched them go. Without her perpetual sunny smile, she looked older than her years, her shoulders slumped, her eyes downcast. Without a word she stepped into the house, then ran for the stairs.

"Kitty!"

Lance chased after her, his heart guiding his feet. He followed Kitty upstairs and into a sweet-smelling, comfortably cluttered room that he realized must be hers. No other room in the house would have a fluffy lavender canopy bed, zebra-patterned furniture, strings of multicolored Christmas lights strung around the walls, shelves of well-loved stuffed animals smiling benignly down at them.

Kitty had curled up in a ball by the headboard. Lance hesitated in the doorway, unsure if he was allowed to come in until she looked up, sighed, and reached a hand out for him. Only then did he pad over the fluffy rug and crouch by her side.

"Kitty? Are you okay?"

He wasn't good at this, but wanted so badly to be. When she just shrugged, fumbling for him, he let her take his hand and tried to guess at her feelings. “That… that sucked, huh?  Did I mess up your friendship?"

Kitty shrugged, letting go of Lance to hug her arms around herself. She was staring at her feet. Lance wanted to climb on the bed, to hold her, to make it all better, but she wouldn't look at him.

"Do you want me to go?" he asked, and flinched when his voice cracked. "Are you mad at me?"

She shook her head no. "I... had a feeling this was coming. They’ve been acting weird for a while."

"Because of me?"

Again, Kitty shrugged. "Yes. No. Partially. Because I'm Jewish. Because I'm clumsy and dumb. Because my mom won't let me pierce my ears or shave my legs. Because... I don't know."

Maybe it was all of those things, but Lance knew it was mostly his fault. Pietro's, too, but mostly Lance's. His heart sank. He knelt on the bed and, awkward as a penguin on land, wrapped his arms around her, tucking his chin over her wet hair.

"I don't like it when people are jerks to you," he murmured when her arms linked around his neck. "You're awesome. And you’re not dumb. You're Captain Kitty Takes-No-Shit."

She giggled, sniffed wetly, and moved a hand to wipe covertly at her eyes. "To you, maybe."

They sat like that for a long time. Her proximity made Lance's heart pound. He tried to ignore it.

"Lance," Kitty said, after some time. "I have something I need to tell you. It's a secret, okay? You can't tell _anyone_ , and you have to _promise_ to stay my friend after you know."

Lance's mouth felt very dry. She sounded so _serious_. "Uh. Yeah. Of course...?"

"Okay. I'm..." She moved to sit up, so he let her go and sat back on his heels. They sat knee-to-knee now, meeting eyes. He brushed a stray tear from her cheek with his knuckles, and she closed her eyes, leaning into his hand. "It's this... This thing I can do. It's kind of freaky--"

"Pumpkin?"

Carmen's voice from the doorway had them springing apart and Lance scrambling to his feet. He was not looking happy. Lance was suddenly very aware that he wore only his hand-me-down swim trunks.

"D-Daddy," Kitty stammered. The strap of her one-piece had fallen from her shoulder, and she guiltily pushed it back into place. "I'm..."

But she, too, looked to be at a loss for words. Feeling as though his insides had knotted and then frozen, Lance stood on tin-soldier stiff legs.

"Sir," he began, face heating. He wished he had better control of his blush; it likely just made him look more guilty. "We weren't--"

"Kitty, you know you aren't allowed to have boys alone in your room," Carmen scolded. Lance supposed he could have sounded angrier, all things considered.

"I followed her, sir. She didn't bring me," Lance explained, and wondered if he could say any more, then decided to keep quiet. If Kitty didn't want Carmen to know that she was being picked on, he certainly wasn't going to tattle.

Carmen looked them both over, blue eyes sharp. Lance suddenly remembered him mentioning he'd served in the army; had achieved some high rank before being honorably discharged and taking on a career as an auditor. The thought of relaxed, friendly Carmen in the army had seemed so alien, but now...

"Lance, please come downstairs with me," Carmen said. "We need to talk."

"Daddy--" Kitty protested, but Carmen held up a hand.

"You're not in trouble. We're all friends here. But I'll be speaking to you, too, in a minute."

There was no point in arguing. Lance nodded his head and felt his headache from earlier intensify. "Yes, sir."

He didn't want to leave a sad Kitty behind, but he didn't want to get her in bigger trouble, wanted to salvage any potential of friendship that he could.

Descending the polished oak staircase with Carmen just behind him felt a little like walking the plank, even when stepping into the familiar and beloved office where he had his lessons. He sat tentatively on the desk chair, then wondered if he was meant to be standing.

Carmen scrutinized him, then sighed.

"I heard what you said to those girls, Lance. Are things bad for Kitty at school? She always acts so happy, but sometimes I wonder..."

This was so far out of what Lance was expecting that his brain stalled. "Huh?"

"Jackie and Heather. They used to be such nice friends, but lately..." Carmen shrugged. "Kids just change as they grow up, I guess. Grow foolish. Forget what matters."

Had they, though? If they honestly perceived Lance as a threat, was steering clear of him-- and anyone he hung out with-- really such forgetful, foolish behavior?

Were they wrong to be afraid of him?

"I can't... answer that," Lance mumbled. Sometimes Kitty _was_ teased at school. She never seemed much to mind, but... "She'd probably tell you if you asked, but I won't." He half-expected Carmen to strike him for such open defiance. The scar on his back itched in a phantom-burn.

Carmen didn't hit him. When Lance dared meet his eyes again, he instead saw admiration.

"You're somethin' else," Carmen said, laughing a little. "Kitty's lucky to have you in her life."

Lance wasn't so sure about that. "I'm surprised you let me be her friend at all," he confided, half-fearing that to speak the words aloud, would break some spell, that Carmen would realize Lance had been dirt all along. He wouldn't blame the man for telling him to get out of his girl's life forever.

Carmen frowned, reaching to clasp Lance's shoulder. Lance, startled by the sudden movement, shifted away, then reddened. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I'm--"

"I understand, Lance." Carmen's eyes were sad as he dropped his hand, taking a step back. "Truly. Teresa and I are in your corner. I've gotten to know you over the past year, and what you did for Kitty tonight has cemented what I knew all along. You are a _good_ boy, and an amazing friend. Of course I'm concerned that her two closest friends are boys, but my Kitty is a smart and strong girl. Look me in the eye and tell me you won't hurt her."

Lance tilted his head up to meet the man's eyes. He did not blink. "Never, Car-- _sir_. I'd never let anyone hurt Kitty."

Carmen stayed silent for one heart-sinking moment before his demeanor softened, and he gave Lance a smile. "I believe you. Forgive an old man's caution. I just want to give my child what I couldn't have growing up. She was such a small and sickly baby... I spent the first few years of her life just terrified of losing her. That fear never really went away. Maybe when you're a parent, you'll understand."

But Lance thought he understood _now_. He already wanted to give Kitty-- and Pietro, too-- everything he couldn't have. If he could somehow catch the sun and moon on strings and hang them from their necks, he'd do it.

"What you said earlier, about being in my corner..." Lance kicked his heel against the rung of the chair. "What does that mean?"

Carmen considered, absently touching the strings of a wall-mounted guitar with thumb and forefinger as he did so. Not for the first time, Lance’s eyes were drawn to the small tattoo of a bird on his forearm.

"It means I'm here for you; that I want to give you options. It means you can tell me if something's wrong. It means that I would very much like for you to graduate high school, even if everyone in your life is telling you not to bother."

That last statement was so specific that Lance frowned. Nobody had told him _not_ to graduate high school. It just hadn't been much of a priority. Most Round Table boys dropped out when they were sixteen.

Carmen wasn't finished speaking. "It means that _when_ you graduate high school, I'd like to help you find a university."

A university! That was at _least_ four years away. Lance never thought so far in advance. A part of him had never really believed he'd live that long, anyway. Round Table boys bought fake birth certificates and enrolled, underaged, in the army. Round Table boys sold meth for big-name dealers. Round Table boys went missing all the time and were found weeks later rotting under bridges with the other tweakers, sometimes with bullets in the backs of their heads.

Round Table boys did not go to universities.

Lance, sensing a catch, stiffened warily. Nothing came without a price. "In exchange for what?" he asked, mistrustful. He was too wise in the ways of adults to trust opportunities and dollar signs waved in his face. Nobody was kind for free.

"In exchange for what you're already doing. Be Kitty's friend. Stay by her side. Continue being yourself, Lance. You’re her knight in shining armor, worth your weight in gold."

Lance blinked, shocked into stillness, unsure what to say to this. No adult had ever said any such thing to him before. Carmen’s warm smile then turned stern once more.

"I mean it, though. I know you're a good boy but... No more going into her room okay? A man has to have some boundaries."

Lance gulped, feeling his palms sweat. He couldn't look at Carmen as he replied, “Understood, sir."

"And no more of this 'sir' stuff! Who is 'sir'? I don't know him. I'm _Carmen_." He gave Lance a teasing nudge. It felt like being forgiven.

A gentle tap on the open door alerted them to Teresa's presence. "Hey, boys," she greeted. "Most of the party's starting to clear out. What do you say we save clean-up til tomorrow and watch some movies in the basement? Pietro said he can stay."

"Sounds great to me!" Carmen didn't sound like he was about to tell Teresa what had happened, but that didn't mean he wouldn't later. Lance gave them both a little smile.

"Sounds good. You guys wouldn’t happen to have any aspirin, would you? My head is _killing_ me.”


	13. Perfectly Natural

_ November 2000 _

Sophomore year had been pretty good to Pietro so far.

He had begun by stealing ridiculous amounts of food each day; enough that his chest was no longer concave, and his twiggy limbs were beginning to fill out with wiry muscle.

Like Father, he was meticulous with grooming; never a silver hair out of place. His clothes, also stolen, were brand-name. He tailored them himself so that they fit him perfectly.

Girls were taking notice. They liked that he was different from the average high school boy-- not just in the way he looked, but in his stellar grades, his wide array of skills, his notoriety on the basketball team. The fact that he could steal just about any gift they could ever want. Throw in some German sweet-talk and they were putty in his hands. Funny how the things that had made him a pariah in middle school now made him popular.

And now, tonight, he at last had something to show for his efforts. Shivering a little in the November cold, he raced the familiar path under a full moon to a house both more wild and free than his own.

Lance didn't bother latching his bedroom window anymore. It slid open on well-used tracks, and Pietro turned his back and leapt, resting his butt on the sill before toppling backwards onto the ever-present mountain of dirty laundry. He kicked his shoes off and made the route path to Lance and Griff's bunk, climbing the ladder and finally flopping on top of the larger boy.

Lance pressed silently to the wall, making more room on the mattress and pillow before whuffling his nose into Pietro’s hair. "You smell different," he said, voice slurring with more than sleep.

"You should talk." Pietro wrinkled his nose. "You reek like a distillery.  _ Again. _ "

"It's the headaches."

Pietro didn't want to hear about Lance's self-medicating, not now. If he didn't acknowledge there was a problem, maybe it would go away on its own. "Do I smell like a man now?" he asked instead, proudly puffing out his chest. "Nobody ever threw  _ me _ a bar mitzvah. I had to find my own path."

"T'hell are you talkin' ‘bout?"

“Matters of love and manhood, my one and only Lancelot.”

Pietro made himself comfortable on the bed, arranging both himself and Lance underneath the blanket. Lance, as usual, wore only boxers, but his skin burned warm enough that Pietro's shivering tapered off in a minute. By morning they’d both be sweating.

Griff, annoyed by the familiar squirming, kicked the bottom of their mattress. Pietro grabbed one one of Lance's rock collection from the bunk railing and chucked it in Griff's general direction, smirking at the hissed, " _ Ow _ ! Fucker!" that followed.

"Ask me for a secret," Pietro said, too giddy to hold still. He crossed one leg on top of the other, his bare toes skimming a ceiling panel as he jiggled his foot. Tonight had been better than making any score at cards. The thrill of something  _ new  _ was fresh.

Lance propped himself on an elbow, focusing bleary eyes on Pietro's silhouette in the dark. "You  _ can _ just tell me stuff," he pointed out peevishly. "It doesn't always have to be a secret."

"Just ask."

"Fine!" Lance huffed an annoyed sigh, but Pietro didn't think he was imagining the note of amusement in his tone. "Pietro Django Maximoff, my moon and stars,  _ won't  _ you do me the highest honor of telling me a secret?"

"Since you asked so nicely, I think I will!" Pietro realized he was being a little too loud, that they were surrounded by other sleeping boys, and lowered his voice. "I totally just nailed Betty."

Lance stilled, sobering fast now.

"For real?" he asked. His voice sounded odd all of a sudden. Not very Lance-like at all. "You're not kidding?"

"Nope. We were in her dad's boat, parked in the garage." Pietro had been burning to tell Lance ever since it'd happened. Heck, all he could think about was how much he wanted to tell Lance about it, even  _ while  _ it happened.

"Okay, I guess…?"

Wow, way to harsh his buzz. Lance didn't sound enthused at all. His tone seemed to question why Pietro bothered telling him, making Pietro feel stupid. Childish.

"What, you're not even gonna ask what it was like?"

"I have a feeling you're going to tell me whether I want to hear it or not." There was a long, pointed silence while Pietro glared at his supposed best friend. At last Lance huffed a sigh. "Fine. What was it like?"

Pietro chose to ignore the sarcasm in his voice. "Fast. Wet."

Lance made a retching noise. Pietro smacked him on the arm. "Don't give me that. You know you would if you could."

"With Betty? No thanks."

"What's wrong with Betty?!"

"She has weird eyes."

"They're golden-brown, just like yours." Her pretty eyes were what had drawn Pietro to her in the first place!

Lance shrugged helplessly, as though it was impossible to convey in words the weirdness that was Betty Winters. Pietro's good mood was well and truly killed. What was the point of even shedding his pesky virginity like last year’s fashion if he couldn't impress Lance with the gory details?

"Are you gonna do it again?" Lance asked, after a silence that was difficult to read. "With Betty. Is she your girlfriend now?"

Pietro hadn't thought that far ahead. "Maybe..." he mused, considering. "I don't know. I was kinda thinking about trying Veronica next. Just dye me ginger and call me Archie."

"Gonna work your way through the whole drama club, huh?" Lance asked acerbically. He sounded disapproving, but why  _ shouldn't _ Pietro do just that?! That'd show anyone who'd ever called him fairy; 'fag.' Who'd ever tried to touch him in a bus. That'd show Mary and Angus who needed to go to Christian camp for a good brain-porking from Jesus.

Lance shifted against his side. Pietro wriggled too, his hand sliding from Lance's arm to his chest, playing absently with the guitar pick that hung there. As always, even despite his annoyance, he felt lulled to a drowsy state of near-calm by Lance's solid, rocklike presence.

"You're really not interested in this stuff?" Pietro asked, at last. "I know you like girls." He'd caught Lance, time and time again, noticing a long pair of legs or a bust that really filled out a sweater. "There's nobody you'd go for? Come on, Lancelot; you owe me a secret now."

"A secret under duress."

Pietro was pleased by his word choice. So he  _ had  _ been doing his English homework. "It still counts."

Lance sighed, considered. Made a huffing noise when Pietro's hand slid to prod at the bumpy muscles just under the soft flab of his stomach. "Maybe I like Kitty," he admitted, pushing Pietro’s hand away.

Pietro made a face. Kitty was a mutant. She'd be coming with him, like it or not, when Father returned. He hoped she wanted to go, because he really didn't want to kidnap her. Maybe it was time to start thinking of ways to keep her.

"Maybe try someone more in your league?" Pietro suggested helpfully. "Kitty's _definitely_ not interested, man, I’m sorry. What about Stacy? She likes you."

"Stacy...?"

"Moreau. Blonde? Legs for days? Middle-blocker on the volleyball team? Pretends she doesn't understand blackjack so you'll keep ‘helping’ her during meets?"

"She's pretending?"

Pietro rolled his eyes. This guy was well and truly hopeless. "What would you do without me?"

"I’d cry myself to sleep every night," Lance replied, deadpan. "Oh where has my favorite pain in the ass gone? Who will annoy me now?"

Pietro laughed, pleased at being called Lance's favorite despite the guilt squirming in his stomach. Lance tended to be warmer, more affectionate, funnier when he'd been drinking a bit. He  _ had _ to get Lance connected with some humans. He was too damn attached to the things he couldn’t keep.

"Will you talk to Stacy? For me?"

"I don't... I don't think I like Stacy like that," Lance mumbled uncomfortably, turning his face away. "Do I _have_ to?"

Frustration replaced his guilt. How could he help Lance if he wouldn't let himself be helped? "What's wrong with Stacy?" He demanded. “Are her eyes weird, too?”

"No! I just... I don't think I could like someone if I wasn't friends with them first."

"But you're not friends with anyone but Kitty!"

"And you."

Pietro forced himself to count to ten before he started ripping his own hair out. "Well, unless you have some weird master plan to hook up with me or Kitty, I suggest you expand your horizons. Tomorrow you need to try and  _ make friends _ with Stacy.” He tried not to sound too disdainful, but really. This guy was  _ obtuse. _

He could actually hear Lance glaring at him before rolling onto his side, giving Pietro his back. Great; now he was sulking--

"Did you wear a... You know..."

\-- or perhaps just shy.

"A condom?" Pietro asked teasingly, poking Lance in the stomach to make the boy flinch grouchily away from him. Pietro wondered if he was blushing. The thought made him grin. Making Lance blush was one of his favorite hobbies. "Yes,  _ mother _ ."

"Good. I'm not ready to be an uncle."

Pietro just about laughed himself to sleep.

жж

The bunk had been a tight fit for the two of them at age thirteen. Now, at fifteen, both racing one another to crack six feet, Lance considered it a miracle when neither of them ended up on the floor.

He had strange dreams that night. All the midnight talk of hookups and Pietro and Stacy and Kitty and Betty had marbled together into a vaguely uncomfortable slideshow of things the videos shown in biology class called “perfectly natural.”

He was relieved to wake with Pietro pressed to his back this time, instead of the other way around. They'd had a few awkward mornings lately that made Pietro snicker and Lance's soul burn a shamed crimson.

Pietro mumbled incoherently, nuzzling his face between Lance's shoulder-blades, his arm tightening around Lance's waist. Lance didn’t normally like people touching his back-- the numb place along his scar was always disconcerting-- but, well. This was  _ Pietro _ .

"You gotta let me go, Tro," Lance whispered in the stillness of morning. "I need to pee."

"No." Pietro was stubborn. He insisted that Lance was his lucky charm, making sleep possible when he otherwise had to hunt it like bison across a prairie, spear at the ready. "Five more minutes."

Lance, with a resigned groan, sank back onto his pillow and tried very hard not to think about boats.

жж

_ March 2001 _

Pietro sat cross-legged on a stump, surrounded by foliage, working on his homework while Kitty tested her mutation out in the forest stream. It was swollen to overflowing by all the recent rain. The yellow pollen drifting from trees in bloom itched his nose and eyes.

_ “I know _ I can do this," Kitty muttered stubbornly, arms held out for balance. "I can manage it in the pool sometimes, for a few seconds... "

"Uh-huh." Pietro disinterestedly flicked ahead in his history book, seeing how much farther the passage extended. Lance would most likely end up copying his homework later anyway, so he had to get this bullshit done tonight.

"Look, Tro, I'm doing it!" Kitty called excitedly, and he glanced up in time to see her slip and fall painfully onto her ass.

"Nice going," he said, raising a sarcastic eyebrow when he saw she wasn't actually hurt. "Give it up, Pryde. This hurts to watch."

She glared at him, embarrassed, still flopped pathetically in the water as it ran over her twiggy bare thighs. "You don't have to be so mean all the time."

She sounded close to tears. It wouldn't be the first time he'd made her cry. But how else could she hone her skills if she didn't have a little adversity to spur her on? It wasn't as though she had someone to train her properly, as Pietro had had.

"And you don't _have_ to sound like a child, yet here we are." Pietro said the words thoughtlessly, then froze. How many times had Father said those exact words, in that _exact_ tone, to him? To Wanda?

He forced himself to look at her downcast face, to remember how  _ he'd  _ felt on hearing those words. Sighing, he snapped his textbook shut and set it aside, yanked his shirt over his head, and kicked his shoes and jeans off.

Kitty's eyes widened when he stepped into the stream after her, wincing at the chill of water and slimy dead leaves rubbing his skin. Mud sucked unpleasantly at his ankles. He bent, caught her under her arms, and hauled her to her feet, trying not to cringe when she dripped down his front.

"Try again," he instructed bossily, taking her hands. "I won't let you fall."

He’d grown. She now had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. He didn't look away, not even when the two of them lost physical mass and he felt the water rushing  _ through  _ them. Kitty made a distressed noise as she began to sink down through the mud and rocks. He knew that becoming stuck underground was one of her biggest fears.

"Wrong way, Kätzchen," Pietro murmured calmly, not letting his alarm show. "Come on. Up."

She shook with strain. Sunlight refracted differently off of her when she was phasing: sparkling, opalescent. He kept hold of her hands. If he let go, she'd slip through him, too.

"I know you can do it," he said confidently, offering her the encouragement Father had never once given him. "I'm proud of you."

She gulped, nodded, and rose. He released one of her hands, allowing her to turn, to take a cautious step and then another on the ever-moving surface of the water. It didn't so much as ripple underneath them, didn't show a hint of surface tension. They did not cast a shadow.

"You did it," he said, his admiration truly genuine now. "Kitty, you're doing it!"

He walked a few paces with her along the surface of the stream before she lost her focus and they solidified, sinking again to the muddy bottom.

"Tro!" she squealed, the rainbow train-tracks of her braces glinting as she threw her arms around him. "I walked on water!"

"That's amazing," he said sincerely, returning her hug. "You're amazing."

It must have dawned her that she was both drenched and wearing nothing more than a dripping tank top and blue panties, because after a moment of peeking she turned away, reddening at the brush of his bare skin.

"Ah, I guess that's enough for one day." She laughed shyly, climbing to the shore to pick up her dress and shoes, And slipping behind a tree to change. "Thanks for helping me out."

"It’s what I’m here for." Father would have demanded she repeat the process another ten, twenty times. Until she was vomiting. Until she could no longer stand. If he kept being so soft on her, how would she improve?

She emerged from behind her tree. "Could you put your clothes back on? I know half the girls in Deerfield have seen you naked, but I'm not interested."

He struck a dramatic pose. "Aw. Not interested in all  _ this _ ? Don’t lie. I’m everybody’s type, babydoll."

She snorted derisively. Her cheeks were still red, as was her neck. "All I ever hear anymore are girls complaining about you. That’s all they talk about! You should see the stuff they write on bathroom walls."

Pietro, flattered to be so notorious, made a show of shimmying back into his clothes, scraping thick black mud from his shins onto the grass. "They love me, really. Hey, can I try something?"

Kitty, in the process of twisting her dark hair into a damp bun, gave him a wary glance. Why were people always so suspicious around him? "I don't know,  _ can  _ you?"

Rolling his eyes at her pedantry, he didn't bother to wait for assent before he lifted her in his arms, a hand supporting her back, another under her knees. "Now phase."

"Uh, okay...?" She did so, her hand on the back of Pietro's neck again rendering them both intangible.

With a wicked grin, Pietro broke into a sprint. Kitty realized what he was about to do a heartbeat before he did it, and she  _ screamed _ as they breezed through tree after tree; a whole forest full. If she stopped phasing, the two of them would be dashed to bloody bits against the oaks at a speed far greater than any car crash.

She didn't stop screaming until he halted, now at the treeline facing the middle school they'd once attended. She was trembling like a leaf, and did not stop phasing until he set her back on her feet.

She then sank bonelessly to the grass, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her face in her knees. He supposed travelling at that speed  _ would _ be disorienting to anyone not used to it, but he was still high on the thrill. The possibilities this little experiment had just opened up! Together, they were almost as powerful as Father, or even  _ Wanda _ , if in a different way.

"We," he marveled, immensely pleased with the results. "Are  _ magnificent _ ." They could run the entire world over, invisible and untouchable to all.  _ Nothing _ could stop them. Not buildings. Not mountains. Not an  _ ocean _ , if she kept up her walking-on-water trick.

Kitty gawked up at him, pupils tiny pinpricks of terror. "And you're crazy! Don't  _ ever  _ do that to me again, do you understand?!"

Oh, she'd change her mind. Eventually. It'd just take some getting used to. "Whatever you say."

She was still shaking too hard to stand, so he sank down beside her, resting his head on her shoulder and giving her his most charming smile. "Kitty-Kitty- _ Kitty _ -cat, don't be mad at me."

Scowling, she pushed him away. "Don't be cute right now. I  _ want  _ to be mad at you."

"But you don't really, right?" He cupped her jaw in his palm, pressing both thumb and index finger into her plush cheeks to make her mouth pucker, then worked her chin for her. " _ I love you  _ far _ too much to be mad, Pietroooo, _ " he cooed in a ridiculous falsetto until she had to laugh.

"You're the actual worst," she said when he let her go, but she was smiling a little, so he considered it a victory. "How come I haven't met any other mutants but you?"

There were more mutants born now than there had been even ten years prior, though their existence had been recorded as far back as 13th century Egypt. Father had hired geneticists to learn if desirable mutations could be cultivated with careful breeding, or if it was all completely random.

"There are bound to be more, even in Deerfield. It's estimated that one out of every thousand babies born now carries the X-gene-- like, say, one of your parents-- but fewer manifest it."

Not to mention, not all mutations were visible or noteworthy enough for someone to even realize they were different. Kitty was a stellar find.

"Do  _ you _ know any other mutants?" she asked, playing with a blade of grass.

"Yes." He didn't like giving up answers like this, preferred to keep his secrets close to his chest. She wasn't even offering secrets of her own to sweeten the deal. But the two of them would likely be stuck together for a long time, maybe even all their lives. It behooved him to be honest. "My father, for starters. He’s possibly the most powerful mutant in a century.”

"What about your mother?”

“She was human. She died when I was a baby. A blood-clot in her leg got to her heart.” It’d likely been his fault, too.  _ He’d _ been the premature twin all tangled up in his own umbilical cord. If she hadn’t had to have the emergency C-section...

Kitty touched his arm, eyes wide with sympathy. “I’m so sorry, Pietro. I can’t even imagine what that’s like. My family is everything to me... You know you’re my best friend, right? I love you.”

It was like everything she said was deliberately targeted to guilt him. To remind him of what he was going to take her from; to take  _ from  _ her. He hopped to his feet, stretched, and offered her a hand. "Yeah, well. I love you too, Pipsqueak. Quit looking at me like that."

He didn't think about his mother often, but knew he took after her. He was darker-skinned and more delicately built than Father or Wanda. Father had said, once, that it was sometimes difficult to look at Pietro because of it. Maybe it'd been a relief when his son's crow-black hair had lost all its color.

Kitty stood, too, and pressed into his side,  craving the closeness and reassurance of physical contact, as always. He’d learned this about her early on, had adapted it into his life for convenience’s sake.

"You have to be home for dinner, right? I could carry you," Pietro offered, with mixed sincerity and curiosity. "No phasing this time."

Before today, he'd never carried anything alive while running, and it wasn’t a great idea to push his luck. It was possible she could get seriously hurt, or even killed. The vacuum pressure on her eyes and eardrums, for one thing. The possibility of dropping her, for another. Still...

Kitty shook her head, taking a hasty step out of his reach. "That was  _ awful _ . I hated it!"

"What if we need to?" Pietro argued. "In a fight or something. Wouldn't you rather be used to it?"

She barked an incredulous laugh. "Pietro, I don't  _ get  _ into fights. Who do you think I am?!"

Well. Not _ yet _ , she didn't.

"I just think it's something we need to practice. Maybe not today. But promise you'll think about it?"

Seeing that he wasn't going to drop it, she caved. "Fine. I'll  _ think  _ about it. You're so pushy."

He couldn't afford not to be, but he could at least try to make up for it, could try to keep her sweet. He took her hand and laced their fingers, smiling gently until she softened. "I'll walk you home, okay? There's all kinds of weirdos around town."

She seemed pleased with this, swinging their clasped hands between them as they turned at the middle school. "Sounds good. I almost never get to spend time with you. You're always so busy."

"Not too busy for you, pretty Kitty. I go to all your track meets, don't I?" And before that, the botched choir concerts. And before  _ that, _ the fairs where she displayed her lumpy pottery bowls...

This, she could not deny. He, Lance, and sometimes Stacy made it a point to cheer for Kitty, which was often a painful experience. She tried her best, as she did in all things, but while Lance was staring down anyone who dared laugh at her, Pietro was biting his nails in dread for the day she phased  _ through  _ a hurdle.

"That must be frustrating for you," she remarked. Sometimes it was too obvious that her mother was a therapist.

“Stacy constantly trying to shove her tongue down Lance's throat like she's oyster diving? Yeah, it  _ is _ pretty annoying."

Kitty shot him an odd look, the slightly sunburned skin of her nose shiny in the setting sun. "Uh, no. I meant watching everyone run so slow compared to you. _You're_ one to talk about the kissing thing, though. I have to be the fifth wheel all the time around you guys."

She tried to step over a low wall that separated the middle school's soccer field from the residential neighborhood just beyond. With an elaborate gesture, he gripped her waist and swung her over it, then hopped on after like they were Rolf Gruber and Liesl von Trapp. She had such a brilliant smile, braces and all, that it was hard not to smile back.

"Fifth wheel, huh?" He hadn't put much thought into her perspective on his and Lance's dating lives. Lance often acted as though  _ he  _ were the fifth wheel in his own relationship. Pietro knew he still wasn't too invested in this thing with Stacy, but hopefully he'd come around. Stacy was popular; she could build him connections with his own kind. Even if things with her didn't work out, Lance would hopefully be better off for having made the effort.

Still, watching him uncomfortably return her kisses was not only gross, but also  _ frustrating _ . He could try to look a little less like the most introverted dad at a backyard barbeque.

"Yeah,  _ fifth wheel _ ," Kitty complained, kicking a rock in the street and sending it skittering a few feet ahead of them. "And now you two are going to prom and I hate it. You’re always doing stuff without me."

They were sophomores. Underclassmen. But three of the four girls who had asked Pietro to go with them were juniors, and one was a senior. And after volleyball season had ended, Stacy’d made cheer, so that got her-- and by extension, Lance-- an automatic in.

" _ You _ wanna go to prom?" Pietro asked, surprised. Kitty was social with all her nerd-friends, but prom didn't seem like her scene. He tried to imagine her in a formal gown, but the image eluded him. She was so  _ little _ , short and near flat-chested. She liked cartoons and sparkly unicorn stickers. Most of the time she didn't bother with makeup, and when she did, results veered towards “unfortunate.”

" _ It's so cute that you hang out with her _ ," he'd been teased by his dates. " _ Is her daddy paying you to babysit _ ?"

"Well, sure." She shrugged. "But nobody's ever gonna ask me to anything like that, so."

Lance would have, in a heartbeat. He spent half his time intimidating the nerd-boys in her circle of friends who dared make heart-eyes her way. Pietro was glad that he did. If she developed too much of an attachment to anyone in Deerfield it'd be that much harder to lure her away. So long as her attachment to he, Pietro, remained the strongest...

The realization of what he had to do hit him so hard that he physically reeled. Why in the hell hadn't this occurred to him before?! It solved so many problems at once. He stopped in the middle of the residential road, still holding her hand.

"Kitty."

"Yeah?"

How to go about this? He couldn't charm her in the usual ways; it wouldn’t work. He had to get this  _ right _ . He gave her a smile, nothing flashy, allowing a hint of vulnerability to shine through, then tucked a flyaway strand of hair behind one of her ears.

She blinked at him, uncomprehending. “Everything okay?"

" _ I'd _ go to prom with you," he said sincerely, his mind flipping through a catalogue of all the things Kitty liked. MTV. Strawberry smoothies. Shopping. Rom-coms. Lance.  _ Lance… _ How to be Lance?

Pietro looked away, feigning shyness. "I'm. Uh. I hope it doesn't sound weird to say, but..." He shifted his weight from foot to foot, slumped his shoulders. Risked a peek at her face to see how she was taking it.

Her eyes were boggling. "What are you saying, Pietro?" she asked, her voice a squeak.

He forced himself to stare at his shoes, though it felt stupid. "I guess... I just. I really like you, Kitty. I've  _ always _ liked you." That was close to the truth. She was a likable person. "I know I don't deserve you, but. Haven't you ever kinda...  _ Wondered _ about us?"

He again reached for her hand, meeting her eyes. He knew he had pretty blue eyes, and he allowed them to fill with earnestness now.  _ Drama club, eat your heart out. _ "Go out with me, Kitty?"

She was sheltered, naive. She got all her ideas of romance from the Disney channel. She  _ wanted  _ to be swept away, and now her popular friend was making the kind of proposal she'd likely dreamt about? He saw how much she wanted to believe that someone liked her.

"What about all your other girlfriends?" she asked, self-preservation still shining through her fast infatuation. He wanted to keep her too overwhelmed to think. "I don’t want you to hurt them… And I really don't want you to treat me the way you treat them. I’d _hate_ that. You’re so mean sometimes."

This was true, but Pietro had already dropped them all in his mind, as easily and thoughtlessly as he'd dropped the viola. There were better things than violas. There were more useful things than bra-stuffing girls wearing forty-dollar lipstick. "I wouldn't. I  _ promise _ . I'd be good for you, Kitty, you know I would."

A boy offering to change his tomcat ways for her like something out of her mother's soap operas? He saw the moment he had her under his thumb. The roses in her cheeks bloomed.

" _ Really _ ?" she asked, now daring to be hopeful. "You'd be my... my boyfriend?"

He put enough of a rogue's smirk in his expression to triple her flush. "All yours, Kätzchen," he promised. Before her better judgement could get in the way, he leaned in to press a soft, chaste kiss to the corner of her mouth.

Her eyes fluttered closed, and she stood on tiptoe to shyly return his kiss-- her  _ first  _ kiss, no doubt. His eyes remained open, distant, trying very hard not to think of Lance's face when he found out. He felt filthy, top to bottom and inside out, but this was just the way things had to be.


	14. Losses

жж

_April 2001_

They'd all driven the forty-five minutes to the Bhéara hotel at the edge of Vermont, Illinois for prom, where Deerfield High held all of their formal events. Neither town was large enough to rent a venue on their own, so the two schools had reached a comfortable camaraderie.

Kitty’s parents had sprung for the limo, which was a relief. Kitty, looking like a cupcake in the poofiest gown Lance had ever seen, kept twirling herself dizzy to make the bubblegum tulle billow. Her scuffed sneakers could be seen underneath.

Pietro, never content to be less than the flashiest thing in the room, had modified a white suit with turquoise fabric and silver sequins that he paired with “ironic” Elton John sunglasses.

Lance thought they both looked fantastic. He couldn't stop grinning, glad to see them happy, though it made his heart heavy when he remembered they weren't really there for him anymore; that their trio had inexplicably broken into a duo plus one.

Well, plus _two_. Stacy looked classy and sleek in a form-fitting dress of deep burgundy. Her mother had made Lance a necktie in the same fabric. He’d near-emptied one of the gambling jars to pay for Stacy’s corsage, but he wouldn’t have been able to rent the tux without Carmen’s help.

Carmen and Teresa had been startled to learn that Pietro was taking Kitty to prom. They were supportive as always, but when Carmen showed Lance how to tie his necktie and pin the corsage, he'd laughed awkwardly. "Funny. I always sort of assumed it would be you taking her, you know? I guess kids live to surprise their parents."

“Surprised” didn't even begin to describe how Lance had felt. Numb? Reeling? As though he'd been clubbed in the back of the head?

It felt like some weird prank the two were playing on him. Every time he caught Kitty leaning against Pietro's chest or Pietro sliding his fingers through her hair, he kept waiting for one of them to crow, "Oh my _God_ , Lance totally fell for it!" And then they could all laugh and he could give them both a shove and all would go back to normal…

That hadn't happened yet, and it'd been a solid month. All of Pietro's hookups were growing mutinous, having been dumped en masse. Clearly waiting for Kitty to join the ranks of the spurned, they were astounded when time passed and still Pietro held Kitty's hand as he walked her to class. He’d never shown any such courtesy to _them_!

What was worse was that Lance hadn't had a moment alone with either of them to discuss it. It was almost as though they were both avoiding him. If he thought about it too much, he started to get depressed.

But tonight wasn’t the night for doom and gloom. He allowed himself to be swept away by the extravagance of a limousine, by the beauty of his date. He laughed every time Pietro shimmied his shoulders and put on a goofy accent. He returned Kitty's hug when she squeezed him breathless, gasping at the "night in Paris" theme in the hotel’s ballroom, the paper-mâché Eiffel Tower they took group pictures under, the twinkly lights hung high like stars.

He about raced Kitty to the banquet table upon arrival, and both began unceremoniously stuffing their faces with delicacies.

Just behind him, Stacy cleared her throat, doing that thing where her laugh indicated that she was annoyed as he packed his cheeks with cream puffs. He smiled sheepishly at her until she rolled her eyes. The booming top-forties pop made it a little hard to hear.

"You're lucky you're hot," the cheerleader huffed, poking Lance in the chest, trying to sound playful. Lance raised his eyebrows and grinned pointedly at Kitty, communicating without words as they so often did: _Listen to that ! I'm hot!_

Kitty mirrored his bemused expression, giggling near-hysterically, and Stacy's expression turned frosty once more.

Before she could say anything, Pietro took a running slide in their direction, pointing double finger-guns at Kitty as he glided over the polished wooden floors. He’d set aside his suave identity and taken on a more carefree persona as easily as if he were hanging old outfits in a closet. At least this was more fun than the sleazy Pietro with a billion girlfriends.

Lance tried to be happy for them as Kitty took a running leap his way, arms wide, and Pietro grabbed her by the hips to heft her above his head. The ceiling lights glinted off their many combined sequins like they were people-sized disco balls. The roomful of teenagers gawked.

"They're being Baby and Johnny from _Dirty Dancing_ ," Lance explained to Stacy. The trio had watched the movie together with Carmen and Teresa in the Pryde's truly stellar basement theater a few weeks prior, and had all quite liked it. "Wanna try it?"

She looked at him as though he'd lost his marbles when he wiggled his fingers invitingly, framed as always by his beloved fingerless gloves. "No? Okay." He lowered his hands and tried not to feel disappointed. "Have I uh. Have I told you that you look beautiful?"

At least this made her smile genuinely. "You have. But you could tell me again..."

Sometimes with Stacy, the only thing he could think to talk about was how she looked.

He took her hand, following her to the dance floor, glad that Carmen and Teresa had helped him practice dancing. It'd been humiliating at the time, but at least now he (probably) wouldn't crush her feet with his size-twelves. Mostly it was just swaying, anyway. He could do swaying.

It reminded him of a Halloween several years prior, of dancing with Pietro and Kitty in a crowd of teens all dressed in crazy costumes. This wasn't so different, really… It was just as strange, just as surreal, but twice as lonely. The nostalgia made his chest ache.

"What is it?" Stacy asked. Jeez, but she had a pretty face, all long lashes and soft hazel eyes.

Lance laughed a little. "Did you ever believe in fairies? Once when we were kids, Pietro almost stepped into a--"

He froze. Over Stacy’s shoulder, he saw Pietro pull Kitty close to him, take her chin, and kiss her deeply. The world seemed to go a little fuzzy around the edges, appearing to him in snapshots. Her arms winding his neck. His tongue slipping into her mouth--

At the base of his skull, a dull ache began spreading up: the beginnings of one of his frequent migraines. _Shit_ . He shouldn't have been so surprised, but the two of them hadn't seemed _real_ til just then. He hadn’t seen them kiss before. Hadn’t been prepared for the jealousy it’d evoke. He craved a drink-- any drink.

Stacy glanced over her shoulder, saw the pair, and heaved a deep sigh. "I _was_ surprised when you let the literal devil have your princess," she remarked, the bitter note in her voice dragging him back to the present moment.

Princess? _Let?_ "Devil?" Lance asked, dumbfounded. Stacy rolled her eyes.

"Honestly, Lance? In the past year, that creep's made every single one of my friends cry at least once. I can't _stand_ him. He's a monster! And everyone knows you're head-over-heels for Strawberry Shortcake over there. You haven't taken your eyes off her once tonight."

That was a lot of information at once. Lance blinked, trying to keep up. "Pietro isn't-- I'm not-- _Huh_?!"

"I don't know why I bother," Stacy muttered. He peeked over her shoulder again and was relieved to see that Kitty and Pietro were no longer kissing. Instead they were swaying, foreheads touching, looking into one another’s eyes. That was almost _worse_.

"Don't get me wrong," Stacy was saying, voice very distant, as though coming from underwater. "I don't... I don't have a problem with the kid, not anymore. I just wish I knew what it was about her that has you two so _besotted_. You do know that you're screwing her life up, don't you?

 _That_ snapped Lance's attention back to Stacy like nothing else could. "Wait; we're doing _what_ to Kitty?"

And maybe Stacy did want to sting him a little, because there was a flare of satisfaction in her eyes. "If you two backed off, she'd get picked on way less. She wouldn't feel like she has to run with the big dogs, y'know? She could just be a happy little nerd, free to live her nerd life. But you scare all her friends away. You just won't leave her alone."

Lance gawked at her, blinking slowly. He and Pietro were making Kitty unhappy? Would she be better off without them?  

He thought of a hot summers’ night when Kitty’s two best friends left her because of him. They hadn’t spoken since.

He must have looked truly stricken, because after a moment the malice faded from Stacy's eyes, and she just looked tired, with a little furrow forming between her perfect blonde brows. "Lance," she sighed, defeated. "Do you even _like_ me?"

"Of course I do!" he stammered, at a loss. "Stace, you're great! You're super smart, and cool, and..." And again, his eyes flicked to his friends, drawn as though by a magnet. Now that he’d started, he couldn't seem to stop himself.

Stacy shook his hands off of hers, planted them instead on his shoulders, and gave him a push-- not harsh, but still firm. Her eyes and her voice were both full of tears when she gave a bitter little laugh. "You’re no better than he is, are you, Lance? Look, I like you a lot, but I deserve better."

His jaw dropped. For once, she had his undivided attention, but he could think of nothing to say as she turned her back and stalked out the ballroom, leaving him standing alone in the crowd.

жж

_June 2001_

"Boy!" Mary Hennessy barked, taking rapid steps over the linoleum floored hallway, permed gray hair frizzing in summer humidity. "Boy, what are you doing home at this time of-- Oh, hello sweetheart!"

Pietro, used to watching Mary’s mood turn on a dime, merely arched an eyebrow at his foster mother and slumped deeper into their squeaky, plastic-covered sofa. _The woman should shoot for Broadway,_ he thought sardonically as Mary fussed and cooed over Kitty.

Kitty, uncomfortable around the fosters, smiled too brightly and made polite small-talk. She sat on the floor in front of the couch, legs crossed as she doodled idly in a notebook on her lap. The quietly murmuring television and the slowly oscillating fan spoke to a tired, hot afternoon: exactly the kind where Mary's temper ran the highest.

Pietro forced himself to tune back into their conversation, ready to play defense if either of them said something inflammatory.

"-- his basketball practice was cancelled, so we were just going to hang out here for a while and later try to catch a movie or something? I hope that's okay..."

Mary gave Kitty a beaming smile. "Well of course it is if _you're_ here, Katherine! I just like knowing that the boy is keeping busy, is all. An idle boy is a troublesome boy!" She let out a short, staccato laugh.

Kitty's nervous giggle made Pietro twitch. They never talked about it, but she wasn't stupid. She had to know things weren't awesome at home, no matter what Mary projected. He dreaded the day she forgot herself and backhanded him in front of his girlfriend, though that happened less frequently now that he was physically the largest member of the household.

"You don't have to sit on the floor, sweetheart," Mary tittered, frowning at Kitty's colored pencils on the white carpet. "Surely that boy isn't so boorish as to force--"

"She wanted to," Pietro snapped, then instantly regretted it when he felt the tension in the room increase tenfold. Mary’s anger was a physical weight only he could feel.

Kitty, oblivious, gave an earnest nod. "I'm more comfortable when I can sprawl."

Hoping to appease Mary before things turned ugly, Pietro leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the top of Kitty’s head, picking up her pencils and depositing them into her lap as he did so. He allowed himself to linger a moment, enjoying her sun-warmed hair, her sweet, familiar smell. It calmed some of his anxiety.

It worked a treat. Mary and Angus both deeply approved of Kitty. She was a nice, well-mannered person from an affluent and well-liked family and, most importantly, she was a girl. They'd clearly done their work well, coaxing him onto a more _natural_ path as any good Christian should!

He thumbed the collar of Kitty’s shirt, checking that the chain from her Magen David was well hidden. As usual when she visited the house, he'd tucked it away while distracting her with kisses at the door. She didn't always wear it, and he didn't dare tell her not to-- that’d raise some questions he didn’t want to answer-- but it was best to keep some things out of sight when the Hennessey's were around.

When Mary bade her goodbyes and retreated to the hallway, no doubt already missing her beloved tanning bed, Pietro sat up properly and returned his attention to the television.

"Tro," Kitty began shyly, after several long minutes of dull silence. "Can I ask you something?"

"Always." Well, she could _ask_ , anyway. Didn’t mean he’d answer.

"Why do you only kiss me when other people are watching, or when you want something?"

Something in Pietro's chest went cold at her words. Having no experience in the art of being a boyfriend, he’d copied what he saw on television, imitating all of Kitty's favorite Disney channel hunks, pirating everything from the right types of dates to initiating dinner with her parents.

Evidently, he'd not been good enough. Lance would kick his ass if he knew Kitty was unhappy.

He schooled his face into a gentle smile and tugged her ponytail until she set her notebook down. "Don’t be silly. Come here," he prompted. "Have I ever told you how pretty you look in blue?"　

He took her hand and she stood, smirking in dark satisfaction when all the colored pencils fell from her lap and back to the floor with a clatter. He hoped they left a huge damn rainbow across the entire carpet that no scrubbing could ever lift.

He kept tugging on her hand until, pinking, she knelt on his lap, then crushed a hand to the back of her neck. "I think you're magnificent," he told her, meeting her eyes because it was the truth. She swallowed and allowed him to give her a kiss, even following him down when he lay back on the sofa, though they both winced and laughed when it squeaked.

Kitty couldn't have weighed ninety pounds soaking wet. Her warm weight on his chest was deeply unsatisfying, not nearly enough to drive away the twitchy prey-animal feelings that always overcame him in this house, that had once drawn him night after night into Lance's bed just so he could sleep with both eyes closed. But.

 _But_ Kitty drowned out the smell of lemon cleaner with something tolerable, friendly. _But_ she looked at him with kindness, with love, and her hair falling around his face, thick and dark and long, obscured the horrible yellow paint everywhere he looked. And when he closed his eyes and kneaded the skin of her back, when he slotted his thumbs into the dimples at the base of her spine just to hear her breath hitch, he could _forget_ who and what he was.

Forget he'd ever flinched in a _please-don't-hit-me_ panic when someone on the basketball team reached for a high-five. Forget that his eyes were sometimes drawn to muscular Greek boys with soft brown eyes and crooked smiles who smelled of campfires and always laughed as though surprised the world could still hold small pockets of joy.

He was a seasoned expert at this particular type of distraction...

His face was wet. Why was his face wet?

He opened his eyes and was shocked to see silent tears dripping from Kitty's face, pattering onto his nose and sliding down his cheeks as though her sadness was his.

"Hey!" His heart rocketed into his throat. "No, no, no, hey, Kitty, don't cry! What's wrong?"

Nobody had ever cried _while_ he was kissing them before. He'd certainly never seen such a thing on TV, either. What had he done wrong?!

She put her face in his neck and he hastened to tuck her hair behind her ears, to rub her back in soothing circles. Her strange grief intensified until she was muffling sobs against his skin.

Pietro felt absolutely miserable, wracking his brain for what could have happened. She seemed completely fine just a minute ago. Had something happened at home? Had he scared her?

"Is laying on top of me like this too much? You know I'd never pressure you to--"

He thought he'd been clear on things that. He'd do whatever she wanted, had mentally prepared himself to be at her beck and call, but had not been surprised when she never wanted more than kisses and cuddles, flowers and teddy bears and chocolates. He was a good boyfriend! He knew he was a bad _person_ , but he didn't have to be a cruel one.

She shook her head. "It's not that." Her tears made it a struggle to control her volume. Pietro glanced nervously in the direction Mary had wandered off to, then reached for the remote, turning the sound on the television way up.

"What can I do to fix it?" he asked, wrapping his arms around her waist, crushing her to him.

She _sobbed_.

For the first time in his life, Pietro shut up. He held her until she was all cried out, trying not to think about all the snot and tears she was smearing on his Guess t-shirt.

Finally she stilled, moving her face to rest on a dry patch of shirt, and heaved a great, shuddery sigh. "Can we go for a walk, Tro?"

He went to his room to change his shirt and fix his hair as she swallowed aspirin and poured herself a glass of water in the gleaming yellow kitchen. He watched her wash her face at the sink and offered her a paper towel to dry off with.

He waited until she was finished before walking her outside, feeling too apprehensive to fill the silence with his usual babble as they slowly made their way around the block. He didn't even try reaching for her hand, knew instinctively that it wouldn't be reciprocated.

They made it all the way to a small neighborhood park two blocks over where two teams of preteen girls played a brutal soccer match over yellowed grass, and wordlessly settled on the swingset.

Pietro watched Kitty dig her sneakers into the sand, nudging her swing back and forth.He remained still, heart pounding even faster than normal, anxiety building. The infatuation had faded. He hadn’t been good enough.

He couldn't bear to lose one of his two real friends. Not yet. _Not yet..._

"Tro." Kitty finally looked at him, eyes still bloodshot and puffy from crying. "I don't love you."

He didn't want to know what his face did at that exact moment to make her backpedal so rapidly. "I mean, just, like, not boyfriend-girlfriend love! Tro, I'll always _love_ you. You know that."

He thought of being twelve years old and hiding between shelves of chips and candy, the air conditioning drying his sweat, sticking his shirt to his back. He remembered a pimply, teenaged employee kneeling in front of him. "Hey, kid? Where are your parents?" This felt a lot like that.

_"A Maximoff never cries. Never, ever forget that, son."_

"Pietro?" Kitty was leaning closer, touching his shoulder. "Are you still with me?"

He forced an automatic, toothy smile. "I'm here."

She didn't smile back. "Tro, please don't do that. I can... I can tell when you're faking it, okay?"

"I'm always faking it, pipsqueak."

He hadn't meant to say that; it'd just slipped out. While he sat wondering how to recover from this error, she settled back into her swing, shaking her head.

"Not always. But most of the time. And sometimes I'm faking it, too. I just don't know _why_. Tro, why are we doing this? I don't love you that way. Neither do you. And I think... I think I like someone else."

There, just for a split second... She may have been able to tell when he was faking it, but he knew what her face looked like when she was thinking of Lance. They had at least one thing in common, then.

He might have laughed, had he been feeling more stable. Two full-fledged mutants, the world at their fingertips, the right to rule in their blood, all messed up over one human delinquent.

He wet his lower lip, mind still whirring a thousand miles a second, trying to figure out how to salvage the situation.

"You love me," he surmised, and cringed at the note of desperation in his voice. "I'm not... I'm not _perfect_ , but. I can be pretty damn close. I can be pretty damn close _forever_ , if I need to be. If you just told me what I was doing wrong, I could fix it. I could be whatever, _who_ ever you wanted me to be."

_Are you talking to her, or to Father?_

Kitty looked horrified, eyes shining wet once again. She looked away and wiped at her face with her sleeve, breathing shallowly. "Please don't say things like that," she said thickly. "It makes my heart hurt. Why are you holding so hard to this? To _me_? Is it just because I'm a mutant?"

Oh, clever Kitty.

He considered lying. He didn't; maybe because she could have told the difference anyway. Maybe because he was just tired of lying.

"Yes. Mostly. No. I'm... I do like you. I promise. That wasn't ever a lie. And..." This much honesty caught painfully in his throat. He had to fight his way around it. "I'm never going to forget you. When Father takes me away... I'm going to miss you so much that it's already ripping me to pieces."

Kitty slowly blinked at him, uncomprehending, slowly twisting on her heel to wrap her swing's chains around each other as she thought. "You really think he's coming back, don't you?"

"I know he is." Beyond a shadow of a doubt.

She studied his face some more, seemed to agree he was serious. "You could take me with you," she offered, her voice small, as though already aware that it was hopeless.

Pietro, though touched, was quick to shake his head. "I... I had sort of hoped to take you," he confessed, shamed now at years of cajoling, of manipulation. He should have known all he had to do was ask… This cemented the truth for him. "But I changed my mind. I can’t do it. It has to just be me. I won't let him do to you what he did to me."

It was the closest he'd come to admitting how bad things had been since he'd confessed to Lance some years prior. It made him shake. It made him feel sick, disloyal. Father had only ever been trying to make him stronger, and when he couldn't be improved anymore, then he was just a burden in the way of progress.

"I'd rather die than let him have you," he admitted, voice warbling. _Weak. No control. Maximoffs. Don’t. Cry._ He hung his head in shame. "I just didn't want to be alone.”

жж

Tired, aching, and stinking of manure, Lance left Dave's Nursery and began the long slog to the bus station, paycheck in hand. As far as first jobs went, this one was just shy of back-breaking physical labor, but he couldn't say it wasn't satisfying to care for plant life until it thrived.

Not to mention, it served as a good distraction as to why his two best friends were often too busy for him nowadays.

The Jeep that honked from across the street startled him into nearly dropping his things. He shielded his eyes from the sun, squinting, and saw Dex giving him a two-fingered salute and a cocky grin.

"It's the working man!" Dex called boisterously when Lance whooped and jaywalked to him, just about throwing himself into the passenger seat. He was hauled into a bone-crushing hug.

The nineteen-year-old wasn't around much anymore. Months went by without a sign of him, and then he'd return for a few days, often with presents, before jetting back to the seedy underbelly of Illinois once more.

Dex twisted Lance back and forth with a hand tangled in his sweaty hair, swearing up a pleasant storm. He stank of gasoline and Camels, and for a long, long moment Lance's happiness was complete.

"Took you long enough to show up," Lance scolded, pulling back at last. Dex was looking thin, but sober. When he pressed a hand to Lance's cheek, Lance noticed a new tattoo on his wrist, one that read "WOLF" in large black letters.

"Good to see you too, asswipe," Dex said, grinning and settling back into his seat. "Missed you like hell. Look at _you_ , working nine-to-five like a real man! I'm surprised anyone would hire such a punk-ass delinquent."

"Me too," Lance agreed, turning the air conditioning vents to directly blast his overheated face. A lot of employers, from retail to fast food, had taken one glance at Lance's record of misdemeanors and turned him away at the door. Nobody wanted a violent, thieving arsonist of a Round Table boy on their property. "Dave's cool, though. He says as long as I stay in school and don't get in any more trouble, it's fine."

Carmen Pryde's hearty endorsement had helped a lot, of course.

"And _are_ you?" Dex pulled a cigarette from his pack, tapped it on his palm, and flicked the wheel on his lighter in three deft movements of muscle memory. "Staying out of trouble?"

Lance rolled his eyes and took a drag from the cigarette when it was passed to him, vainly admiring the way it looked between his scarred, callused knuckles in his fingerless gloves.

"Not a lot of trouble to get in, lately," he admitted. Too busy with work to cause drama. Too pressured by Carmen to flunk school. Too depressed over Tro and Kitty's weird new relationship to go skirt-chasing.

Dex gave a curt, businesslike nod. "Fuckin' _good_. If any of us can make it out of this rat trap in one piece, it's you. Stay gold, Lancey-boy."

He started up the engine. Lance finished the cigarette off himself, stubbing it into the ashtray. He leaned back in his seat, content to go anywhere in the world with Dex no questions asked, exhaling smoke into the cloudless and dazzlingly blue sky.

"How's that card-counting boyfriend of yours?" Dex asked, when they pulled into the McDonald’s drive-thru. Lance opened one eye irritably, then shut it again.

"Still counting cards. Still not my boyfriend. Kitty's, actually."

"What!" Dex's voice was muffled by yet another cigarette clamped between his teeth. "Frau Rich-girl and Herr Prissy are a thing? Did not see that coming. I'm sorry, man."

Lance shrugged. It sucked, yeah, but what could he do? Tro was surprisingly good to Kitty. He couldn't really demand any more than that. He’d known he didn’t deserve either of them anyway, so he’d try and be happy with what he could get.

Dex bought a veritable mountain of food at the drive-thru and shoved all of it into Lance’s arms. "I'm not hungry," he said dismissively.

Lance scowled, unwrapping and forcing a burger into Dex's yellow-fingered hand. "Eat. I could snap you like a toothpick."

"I noticed. Damn, kid, when did you go all Jolly Green Giant on me? How's the weather up there?"

Lance smirked, feeling pleased when Dex took a bite of the burger. They ate while they drove, chasing drops of ice cream as they melted down the cone. Lance was surprised when their next stop was the Deerfield credit union.

"Why th' bank?" he asked, mouth full.

"A little birdy told me the darlings running the house were taking their sweet time setting up an account for you. You've probably got some dollars you want to spend, yeah?"

Lance was pleasantly surprised. What Dex said was true. He had two other uncashed checks at home, waiting for an account to be put into. Things at the boarding house always ran at a slug's pace: immunization shots, field trip reports to be signed, bail to be posted... "You'd do that for me?"

"I'm pretty sure I'd set heaven on fire for you."

The sincerity in Dex's voice gave him pause. He looked at the older boy, watching him slide easily into a parking space before pulling the keys from the ignition, allowing Lance to finish eating in peace.

"Why?" Lance asked. "Why have you always been... You know. What makes me so special?"

Dex looked at him for a long moment, then broke the tension by attempting to stuff a salty french fry up Lance’s nose. As Lance batted at him and sneezed, he gave a shrug.

"I told you. You're my kid."

"But why? Why did you choose me?"

"I don't know, asshole! Because you're maybe the only person in the world who thinks I'm worth something. Because when you were a tiny snot-nosed brat with your back ripped open like a pus-leaking Raggedy Anne doll, maybe I poured you a glass of juice and you smiled at me like I was fuckin' Superman or some shit. Because you _shine_.”

Oh. They’d never… They hadn’t discussed this sort of thing, not ever. It felt big, this. It felt like fragile information Lance had to handle very carefully.

"Okay," he said softly, touched, watching Dex breathe hard while glaring out the window. "Okay, Dex."

He bundled up his trash and, when Dex climbed from the Jeep, hastened to follow him into the small, air-conditioned credit union. Standing together like this, it became more apparent that Lance was now both bigger and broader than the other man. It left him feeling odd.

"Anything in particular you're saving for?" Dex asked curiously as they waited in a short line for the teller.

Lance grinned, glad to be back on emotionally neutral ground. "Same thing I've always wanted. A car, a guitar, and to drive so far away that nobody will ever find me."

There were two other things he wanted; secret wishes of his heart, but to ask for more seemed greedy.

Dex chewed this over. "That's not a lot. I could make that happen."

"Huh?" Lance cocked his head, but Dex was heading for the bank teller, rapping his tattooed knuckles sharply on her desk. "Hi, yeah, I want to open an account for this brat."

Paperwork exchanged hands. Where Dex had gotten hold of Lance's birth certificate and social security card, Lance didn't want to know. He showed his own paperwork as well. They signed about a billion forms between the two of them.

The teller took his paycheck, had him sign the back of it, and ran it through a little machine, then sent them away while everything was processed. They sat in a little waiting room and passed the time poking ribs and kicking shins before Lance was handed a shiny plastic debit card of his very own.

"Holy shit." He regarded it with wide eyes, then flushed when the teller gave him a disapproving glare. "I-- I mean. Thank you, miss."

Dex snorted, amused. Lance couldn't stop thanking him as they left the building, bouncing at his heels like an overexcited puppy, before Dex went very still. So still that Lance nearly slammed into him. "What is--"

Lance glanced towards the Jeep and froze. Two police officers were rifling through the popped trunk and hood and glove compartments of the Jeep.

"Lance, go back inside," Dex told him, hushed. He offered the boy a placating smile to show that everything was okay. It might have worked once, but Lance was no kid anymore, and it served only to make him feel cagey. "Just go sit, okay?"

"Huh? No way. Dex, what's going on?" Lance nervously took the smaller man's arm for reassurance.

The cop rooting through the glove compartment emerged with what looked like a paper-wrapped brick, which he placed into a red plastic bag. The bag looked quite full.

At last Lance understood. He felt the last of the day’s smile dying on his face. To have been so happy one moment, and then so incredibly _screwed_ the next was wreaking havoc on his brain. His knees felt like they might buckle. His chest ached _,_ a physical pain that compressed his lungs into the size of a tightly clenched fist.

Dex shook Lance’s hand off and stepped protectively in front of him. To the officers, he asked, lazy and insolent as ever, “Don’t you need a warrant for this?”

Both officers stiffened, raising their weapons. Dex rolled his eyes, somehow managing to raise his palms in surrender with an air of disdain.

That was when something in the back of Lance's head seemed to fracture like glass, splitting, and a hot, burn poured through the fissures. He often came down with headaches, little things he could numb with blessed, ever-available alcohol, but _this--_

"Dexter Winston?" one of the officers questioned, approaching. “We have a warrant for your property _and_ your arrest. On your knees."

Dex obediently knelt as he was read the Miranda rights. It was bizarre to see him so compliant with anyone's orders. Lance had always figured he’d go down swinging.

_He's trying to protect you, dumbass._

The second officer gesticulated with his gun. "You too, kid. On your knees. Hands up."

Dex, allowing himself to be patted down, his front and back pockets emptied, turned to glare their way. "Don't point that thing at him! He's just a kid. He's sixteen!"

"Allen, look at this," called the one now cuffing Dex. He held up Dex's right wrist so the other officer could read the tattoo there. "You were right; he's one of Wolf's boys."

"Son of a bitch," Allen whistled. "Do you know how long we've been tracking that sick bastard?"

"Check the kid. Wolf’s been known to go for younger."

Dex jerked away from him, teeth bared. "He has nothing to do with this. I’d _never_ let him--"

They ignored him. Allen was on Lance in a second, taking his unresisting wrists, finding nothing.

The breaking in Lance's head was multiplying, immobilizing, terrifying. It sounded like a thousand eggshells bursting at once. The pain that followed, licking with cat-tongues down his spine was like being kicked in the balls, something sure to make him vomit when he could again breathe. He felt as though he were splitting apart along the seam of his scar.

"What are you doing to him? What’s wrong with him?!" Dex surged in his officer's hold, smashing his forehead into the man's nose. Bone crunched. Blood spurted. Shouting. Mingling colors obscuring Lance’s vision-- black and silver and navy swirls. He heard a soft moan, long and eerie and reverberating, and realized it was coming from him.

"Gary, I think the kid's having some sort of stroke," Allen called nervously, catching onto Lance's arms when he wavered. His partner was too busy roaring about his broken nose, tazing a shrieking, twitching, drooling Dex into stillness, to pay any attention.

"That's my kid!" Dex foamed insensibly, sounding like a beaten animal. He was pressed flat on his chest, Gary kneeling, bleeding on his back. Lance watched Dex’s lips brush gravel as he struggled, unsteady limbs flailing, to stand. "Don't touch my kid!"

Allen, unable to support Lance's weight, sank with him onto the ground, laying him out flat. "Do you have a history of seizures?" Lance thought he asked, voice echoing dully through Lance’s skull. "Have you taken any drugs? Do--"

How could he speak? He was dying. He was four years old, and John Kotrodimos was flaying the skin from his back with a hunting knife as his mother, too high to even move, stared on.

“ _Oh darling, don’t, he’s only a baby..._ ”

“ _I’m sick of his screaming, Ionia! He’s making me crazy! I’ll give him something to scream about.”_

_The starfire stench of blood. The shouting neighbors. The police sirens shrilling on and on and on and..._

The world shook.

The world _broke_.

жж

When Angus handed him the phone, saying something about a summer biology project, it took Pietro's extensive experience in maintaining a lie to keep his face blank. He'd already finished biology the semester prior.

"Hello?" he said into the receiver, turning away from his foster father, who was already settling back to his sofa, his gameshow. A vaguely familiar voice on the other line sighed in relief.

"Oh thank _God_. Pietro? It's Griff."

Griff? Griff who…? Oh, right. Lance's bunkmate. Pietro wanted desperately to ask how he had gotten this home phone number, but couldn't do so without raising Angus' suspicion.

"What did you need?" he asked, twirling the landline’s cord around his index finger. He kept his voice just the right balance of polite and cooly disinterested.

"It's Lance. He got hurt bad today. I just got him out of the hospital."

Pietro's stomach dropped in an instant, clenching sickly. "What can you tell me about this problem?" he asked, and was proud when his voice didn't reflect the panic he felt inside.

"He collapsed midtown. They think it was a seizure. He was crying _blood,_ and... Shit, man, the _police_ were with him."

Griff sounded scared, like he wanted reassurance. _That makes two of us_ , Pietro thought crankily, heart rocketing like he'd just injected himself with pure caffeine.

"What would you like me to do about it?" he asked. He was meant to go jogging with the basketball team in a few minutes: a summer-long fitness regime meant to build team unity for when school began anew. He'd _already_ run quite a bit, carrying a bundle of weights wrapped in fabric. He'd been attempting to hone his skills in one day carrying a person for great distances, but it still slowed him, made him clumsy.

"Please come over as soon as you can. He keeps asking for you. He doesn't want anyone else. _Please_ , man? Please."

He didn’t want to deal with this. Today had contained enough hell already, and he'd made the decision to slowly fade out of Lance's life, ghosting him until he no longer even thought about Pietro. It was for his own good.

"It's not convenient," Pietro said primly, echoing Father’s words and intonation, and cringed when Griff made a pained, desperate sound.

"He'd do it for you, assface!" Griff snarled into the phone, incensed, borderline hysterical and so loud that Pietro took several steps away from Angus, afraid he might be able to hear. "He would, and you know it! Grow some balls and pretend you give a shit about someone besides yourself for once in your useless life!"

He slammed his phone down so hard that Pietro's ears rang. A little numbly, he told the dial tone, "I'll be there," and hung up too.

"Problem?" Angus asked, blank eyes focused on David Letterman.

Pietro rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb. "Looks like it."

He couldn't run there at top speed; that would have been too strange, appearing to Griff mere seconds after they'd spoken. But he couldn't keep still, either, so he set off at a walking pace, gradually increasing speed until enough time for plausible deniability had passed.

It looked like a damn funeral inside; the typical mish-mash of unruly boys piled inside the entertainment room were uncharacteristically quiet and still. They breathed a collective sigh of relief when Pietro walked inside.

"He won't let us near him," were the first words spoken aloud. Gaten, the gangly pre-teen, was all wide eyes and bitten fingernails. "Is Lance gonna die?"

The question kickstarted Pietro's anxiety. Why were they all looking at _him_ like he held all the answers?!

"Don't be stupid. He's fine," he said, stress bringing out enormous amounts of irritation. He searched around for Griff, gripping him hard by the shoulder when he found him. "I'm here. What the fuck more do you want?"

Griff locked eyes with him. He was shorter than Pietro, but more burly. He could very likely wipe the floor with Pietro if he wanted, and the naked dislike shining in his eyes indicated he'd quite like to. Instead he stood, indicating that Pietro follow him.

He remained silent until they were alone in the empty hallway, cracked walls and all, then growled between gritted teeth: "Lance is like a dad to the little ones. He feeds them. He protects them. He's a bastard, but he’s our bastard. If you hurt him, I’ll kill you myself."

Pietro blinked at this strange and savage warning from what was ordinarily such a mild boy. Did he feel the need to step up, now that the top dog was out of commission? Round Table boys were such strange creatures, with their own laws, their own hierarchy, their own method of survival. They fought one another like feral beasts, but at the end of the day, it was still them against the world.

Without waiting for an answer, Griff reached past him and pushed open a bedroom door.

Lance, dressed in boxers and a tank-top, was lying prone on Griff's bed. A black t-shirt had been rolled into a makeshift blindfold and laid loosely over his eyes. An overturned crate on the floor beside him held a glass of water, two brown pill bottles, and a tiny kitchen radio crackling bars of R&B between the static. There was also a stack of official-looking paperwork.

"You awake, buddy?" Griff called into the otherwise empty room.

Lance made a noncommittal grumbling noise.

"Brought your boyf-- uh. Brought _Pietro_ , like you asked."

 _That_ got Lance's attention. Pulling the shirt aside to peek one bloodshot eye toward the door, he smiled weakly at his friend, then winced. "Hey, Tro. My head’s _killing_ me."

"I heard."

Griff, relieved to be discharged from nurse duty, slipped from the room and closed the door behind himself, leaving Pietro and Lance to regard one another silently.

"C'mere?" Lance requested, disappearing again under his t-shirt. "If you uh... If you want to."

Pietro picked his way through the messy room and sat on the end of Griff's bed, ducking his head so as not to bang it on the upper bunk where they usually slept.

"Sounds like you had a hell of a day," Pietro remarked flippantly, relieved when he saw Lance's mouth quirk. He picked up the paperwork from the table, flipping curiously through Deerfield hospital dispatch papers.

"Unprecedented convulsions," Pietro read aloud. "No history of seizures. Monitor patient for the following symptoms--"

He paged through all of it, speed-reading, the pit in his stomach growing the more he read. This sounded _bad_. This sounded “best-friend-could-have-died” levels of bad.

"’Possible cause: atmospheric pressure change’?"

"Yeah. There was like a freak earthquake thing midtown? Split a water main and everything. Flooding. Didn't you hear about it? It's all over the news."

Pietro, having been in the process of being dumped, hadn't heard much of anything that day. Uninterested in weather reports, freak or otherwise, he paged through more of the stack. There were debit card documents from the credit union and, oddly, “An arrest report?"

"Dex."

There was more heavy grief in that one name than Pietro had ever before heard in Lance's voice. Lance's hand clenched in his blanket, shaking a little.

"Oh."

The guy had always been a sleazebag. It wasn't too surprising that he'd got caught eventually. But Lance loved him, so Pietro put down the papers and carefully lay on the bed beside him, pressing his face to his shoulder. Pretending he didn’t notice Lance reach under his blindfold to swipe at his eyes, that he couldn’t hear him sniffle. "Can you talk, or does it hurt?"

"It hurts. I’ll tell you anyway."

Slowly, Lance filled Pietro in on the events of his awful day. He talked in fits and bursts, pausing when his voice cracked, leaving out vital chunks of information that Pietro then had to backtrack and fill in the blanks for. If it'd been anyone else, Pietro would have been too annoyed to tolerate it.

When he gave in and touched Lance, his face felt too warm. Pietro pressed a cool palm to his cheek and, when Lance made a soft noise of encouragement, gently rubbed his temples, scratching blunt nails into his hairline. Wanda had done this for him on many a bad day, he remembered suddenly. Funny, how such a small thing had stuck in his memory.

Dex's watch at last beeped on Lance's wrist, and Lance sighed shakily, wetly. "I'm supposed to take my meds now. Hand me two of the gabba-whatever?"

Pietro obligingly shook two capsules of Gabapentin into Lance's waiting palm, handing him the glass of water after he'd partially sat up. He watched Lance swallow noisily, taking a second to compose himself before remarking,  "I need to call out of work tomorrow.”

"I'll do it for you."

Lance looked down at him. He was quite tan from working in the plant nursery, his olive skin a much deeper brown now than during school months. Pietro hadn't seen much of him lately-- too busy with basketball, too busy with Kitty...

No, he’d been avoiding Lance. He had been avoiding him, and while he was being selfish, Lance had gotten hurt. It was hard not to blame himself for all of this.

"Thanks for coming, Tro," Lance said, after he'd set his water down. "I really, _really_ wanted to see you. Missed you so much.”

Guilt upon _guilt_ upon guilt.

"Well, you know." Pietro gave a shrug. "You and I are... _you_ know."

“I know.”

Lance's eyes were doing that soft thing again. Pietro pulled him back onto the bed, tugging the shirt-blindfold back into place over those soft eyes. Only then could he press into Lance's side, tangling their legs, taking his hand like he’d done when times were easier. Though they hadn’t done this in a while, it still came naturally as breathing.

He knew he shouldn’t. He'd made his choice, and he refused to change his mind no matter how much it made his selfish coward's heart pound. Father would not be told about Kitty. Lance would confess his feelings for her eventually. They could be happy together, and Pietro...

Pietro would slip from their lives as quietly and painlessly as though he’d never been. Kitty could make Lance happy. Could keep this strange human boy they both loved safe during the war. If Pietro never did another good thing in his life, he could at least take pride in this.

But Lance's free hand slipped into his hair, combing through the silky silver strands, and he felt his resolve waver. He closed his eyes and pressed his face into Lance's palm, allowing himself to feel safe. To have this, if only for now.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Lance confessed. “It keeps looping in my head. Dex… I don’t know what he’s gonna do. What _I’m_ gonna do. He’s… I know he screwed up, but...”

There was nothing he could say that Lance didn’t already know. “We just have to wait and see what happens. Find out when his court date is. You have to stop thinking about it for now or you’ll go crazy.”

He traced his index finger along one of the many jagged white stretch-marks that ran atop Lance’s shoulder like lightning, extending halfway to his elbow. _You know you have it bad when even his stretch-marks break your heart._

"I know. I…” Lance reached to wipe his eyes again. “Can you distract me? Give me a secret?”

_I’d give you my bleeding heart on a silver platter if you asked for it._

"My birthday is in a few days."

He’d kept his birthday hidden from everyone, Lance included, making up new dates every time he was asked. ("It's on Christmas. Just call me the antichrist." "It's on April first. My birthday, like my entire life, is a joke." "It's on a leap day, so I'm only three years old. You should probably stop grabbing my butt, weirdo.")

"It's cuz of Wanda that you don't want anyone to know, isn't it?" Lance's tone was gentle, as ever understanding and comforting even though _he’d_ just been through trauma-city.

"We used to celebrate together," Pietro explained. "Nothing crazy, just... Cake. Presents. Kid stuff. I don't feel like celebrating when I know they won’t let her at her nuthouse."

He realized, too late, that he’d revealed more about his sister’s whereabouts than he’d intended. He waited nervously for questions, but Lance only nodded.

Perhaps the blindfold made him bold, because he touched Pietro's throat, then his chin in tiny, exploratory brushes of fingertips, then, more boldly still, Pietro’s lower lip. When Pietro inhaled sharply, he withdrew his hand.

“Sorry,” he mumbled sheepishly. Then, after a pause, “No, I’m… I’m not. Tro, there’s something I’ve been meaning to… Do you wanna know my secret?”

Pietro’s heart kicked his ribs hard before sinking. That tone… He had a hunch of what Lance’s next words might be. It terrified him. It thrilled him. _I desperately want to know your secret._

He gave Lance’s wrist a squeeze before rolling onto his side, facing the wall. “Maybe later, rockstar. You sound beat to hell. Get some sleep.” By the time Lance woke, Pietro knew he’d be gone. But for now...

There was a pause. Pietro wondered if Lance felt stung by the dismissal. It took longer than usual to shuffle behind Pietro, to drape an arm around his waist, to press his forehead to the back of Pietro’s neck. They breathed together, listening to the static hiss of the little radio.

Lance, nuzzling Pietro’s ear, gave a huge yawn, murmuring along with the soulful seventies music as he slipped into a light slumber. “Wanna get lost in your rock ‘n roll and drift away…”

Pietro realized later, lying awake with Lance’s heart beating steadily into his spine, that the wetness on his cheeks was entirely his own this time. It seemed that at least one Maximoff did still cry, after all.


	15. Alvers, Lance, the Avalanche

жж

_October 2001_

Being able to move faster than human-- and mutant-- eyes could follow sure was beneficial in loading a card game in his favor. Lance thought Pietro was just counting cards, and he was, but he had other tricks quite literally up his sleeves.

At the height of their games, he and Lance were pulling between thirty and fifty bucks a week. Not much in theory, until one considered they were playing for quarters and had to lose often enough that eyes wouldn't grow too accusatory.

Maybe, _maybe_ Pietro was starting to get cocky, reckless. But what was life without a little risk, a new challenge, some greater stakes? Boring, that was what. And there was no Lance around to temper him anymore. Lance had denounced the game as soon as he'd gotten a real job...

"You're killing us today," Tyler groaned, throwing his hand down. "I've never _owed_ money at the end of a game before."

"Yeah..." Natalie remarked, arching an eyebrow at Pietro. "Interesting..."

The alarm that look sent through his guts was almost intoxicating. _Catch me if you can, lovely._ He gave her a long, slow smile; the kind of smile that sometimes had girls crawling in his lap. Natalie wasn't moved.

"Maximoff, your girlfriend's here," someone called.

"Which one?" Pietro joked, dealing a fresh hand, enjoying the crisp autumn breeze ruffling his hair, contesting with the warm afternoon sun on his back. "One more round before lunch is up?"

"Tro."

Oh.

For Kitty, Pietro would turn around, would give the enemy his back. They'd been quiet about their breakup and were still seen together often enough that some still didn't know, though Lance's driving her to school every morning in Dex's Jeep (freshly released from the impound after the trial!) was beginning to circulate a new kind of rumor.

She was looking sweet in a sweater and jeans, her hair falling in loose waves down her back, lips pink with gloss, and he felt an odd urge to pull her closer, to trap her in his arms. Habit? Inclination?

... Possessiveness?

He shook it off. He'd gone and made things in her life weird enough as it was, had spent the past few months trying to slip from her awareness without so much as a ripple. _Let her and Lance figure each other out on their own. Give it time._

"What can I do you for, pretty Kitty?" he asked. His sleazy smile wasn't any different than he'd offer anyone else at the table, boy or girl.

"I need you," she said. Someone-- probably Tyler-- made a suggestive, feminine moan. Pietro resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They might have been juniors now, but half their year still acted like toddlers.

Kitty, too, ignored him. "Come on." She reached for his wrist, tugging. Not a smile to be found. "This is important."

"Kinda busy, princess," Pietro said, dismissively shaking her hand off, already turning back to his game. "Tell me all about it later, I’m sure it’s just fascinating."

He didn't like being cold with her, but what choice did he have?

“It really can’t wait.” She pulled harder on his arm. His annoyance grew. She was the one who dumped him, after all. If she’d wanted things to remain the same, she could have kept her damn mouth shut.

“The answer’s no. Go find someone else to bother.”

“Pietro--”

“Katherine, you’re sixteen. I don’t know how the words ‘fuck off’ can still mean nothing to you, but--”

Growling, she seized his wrist, pink-polished nails biting deep, and _phased_ ; just for half a second, but long enough for dozens of playing cards to rain out of his sleeves. They fluttered over the picnic table for all eyes to see. The wind pushed the incriminating evidence of his cheating around in the ensuing silence.

"Did... Have you always..." Tyler looked from the cards to Pietro's face, slowly piecing together the three years and counting of their con.

Natalie, however, was gawking at Kitty. "What did you just..." she gasped.

Oh, this was bad. Pietro stood quickly, snatching for Kitty's hand and hauling her forcibly from the picnic tables before anyone could come after them. He nearly wrenched her off her feet in his haste.

"Not that way!" she protested shrilly as he made to drag her into the bathroom, to slam her against the wall, to scream in her face. "This way!" She pulled him in the direction of the parking lot.

"You're fucking crazy!" Pietro breathed, his mind frozen in horror. What could he do?! Gather her up and run for it? Start a new life a few states over? "Oh, we're so screwed. They saw you. They _saw_ you--"

"I don't care!" She sounded furious, sounded just as panicked as he felt. "Lance is drunk and he needs us."

"Wait, what?" The sound of Lance's name speared through Pietro's panic, clearing some of the fog away. "Lance only drinks when he's in pain."

"Yeah, well, his migraines have been getting worse. Which you would _know_ if you hadn't abandoned us both for your friends back there.”

"I'm not abandoning you. I'm saving you. Don't be so stupid."

"Yes, yes, Father this, Father that. I don’t care! I'm scared Lance is going to have another seizure. I'm scared something's really, really wrong with him. Pietro, I'm _scared_!"

She was looking at him in true fear, clutching both his wrists. Begging him to do something.

 _Shit_.

"Okay," he said, forcing himself to calm. "Alright. We'll sober him up a little and take him to the hospital for more brain-scans, okay? I'll drive." Neither of them had a licence, but he was a fast learner.

 _What if something really_ is _wrong with him?_ Pietro had researched seizures after the incident, of course, and had concluded it harmless; something about the heat and pressure and atmospheric change driving his brain a little wonky. After that, he’d put no more thought into it. Lance would be fine on his own. But...

How often, over the years, had Lance complained of headaches, migraines? They always seemed to crop up whenever he was especially stressed or unhappy, so Pietro had started tuning them out. Now, the pieces were starting to fall together to paint an ugly picture.

_Maybe something was wrong all along and you didn't notice because you're a selfish, oblivious prick._

They'd cross that bridge when they got to it. Pietro refused to let himself even think about it, not until he had a doctor's verdict in his hands. It could be as simple as a burgeoning alcoholic self-medicating a little too much on a school afternoon.

They walked quickly together through rows of sedans and beamers to the very distinctive Jeep, where Pietro could see Lance's prone form slumped in the driver's seat. When this was over, he'd yell at him for being stupid, too.

The ground trembled. Just for a moment, but Kitty stumbled. Pietro caught her easily, blinking as multiple car alarms started going off at once. Another earthquake? This day just kept getting weirder and weirder.

"What was that?" Kitty yelped, clinging painfully to Pietro's arm. At the sound of her voice, Lance rolled his head to look their way, and Pietro startled. Lance's eyes had rolled back in his head; milky and bloodshot and eerie in their sockets, like something out of a horror movie.

Maybe it _was_ another seizure.

"Help me," Lance slurred, a bubble of foam at the corner of his mouth. "It hurts, Kitty, it hurts so _bad_..."

"We're here," Pietro said, hopping through the Jeep window and onto Lance's lap, maneuvering him onto the passengers' seat with a phasing Kitty’s assistance. "We're here, just hold on--"

Lance, clammy and shivering, positively _reeked_ of sweat and whiskey. His hair was matted with it, his black t-shirt plastered to his skin. Kitty wrinkled her nose, but said nothing.

"Okay," Pietro muttered, familiarizing himself with the controls. Of course the Jeep had to be a manual transmission. Of _course_. Maybe he could just carry him--

Lance leaned out the passenger side window and vomited loudly, profusely.

\-- Or maybe not.

Casting a disdainful glare at the half-empty bottle of jack in the drink's holder, Pietro swore. "You lush. Why couldn't you have just gone to the hospital like a normal person if you were in so much pain?!"

He hadn't expected an answer, but as Lance lurched back into the car, he looked chagrined. "I'm sorry," he whispered miserably. "I'm so-- I think it's happening again."

"What is?" Pietro asked, and then yelped as they were rattled violently by another quake, the Jeep lurching, terrifyingly, onto two wheels by the force of it. For a long moment of grinding metal, it was supported only by the Honda parked to their right. The Jeep was built to survive rough treatment; the Honda was not. Its roof dented and caved.

Lance was panting, chest heaving, eyes still rolled into that milky white nothing...

And at last, at long last, Pietro understood in pure, perfect clarity.

Lance wasn't seizing.

He was _mutating_.

Pietro had only a moment to stare before the shocks gave out and the Jeep rolled back on the roiling ground, rear-ending the minivan behind them, giving them all whiplash and sending Lance, collapsing, into the footwell. Glass shattered. Kitty in the backseat groaned in pain. That wasn’t the worst of their problems though, because then four-thousand pounds of Jeep had, on the lurching ground, started to roll onto its side.

Pietro had the split-second choice to abandon them both, to run and save his own skin. He also had the choice to lift only one of them and possibly survive. Neither of those were really options at all.

Frozen, the falling sensation on a terrible loop in his gut, the stench of burning rubble in his nose, he was saved by Kitty phasing through the backseat and clamping an arm around each of her boys, holding them tight. The vehicle phased harmlessly through their bodies, and they found themselves on the lurching ground instead.

The splitting tar road yawning open like a hellmouth, swallowed them whole. Cars jostled off their suspensions and rolled through them in deafening crashes and sparks, too horrible to watch. Pietro clung to his two friends and closed his eyes tight, trusting Kitty to keep them alive. He could smell only coolant and gasoline. Any moment now and one of the older engines would catch fire.

"Lance," Pietro begged urgently, pushing his face into Lance's hair, gasping into his ear. "Lance, you have to stop. You have to stop _now_."

Kitty gasped, coming to her own conclusions. " _He's_ doing this?!"

"You keep focused!" Pietro roared at her. A Honda ran them over; its spinning wheels passing through Pietro's intangible body with the carbonated sensation of a shaken soda. He could have wept in terror, his fight or flight response screamed at him, battering him violently like a rabbit in a cage. If Kitty dropped her guard for even a heartbeat...

The rift in the ground opened wider, deeper, spiraling outwards from where they crouched. How deep would it go? How far would the radius extend? Would the whole parking lot sink? Would the school, its hundreds of students trapped inside? As the rubble began to bury them, Pietro felt the claustrophobia sinking in.

"I can't stop it," Lance choked, seizing. "Make me stop. Please!"

Pietro could still grab Kitty and run, but without her phasing, Lance would be buried, crushed. There was no point in even trying to take Lance from the earthquake, as he _was_ the earthquake.

The metallic clang of pipes busting and the sulfurous stench of a sewer line breaking open joined the cacophony and, as the cracking fissures extended out to the nearby telephone poles, there was a zap and crackle and crunch of wood, metal, wire snapping. The vast destruction was nigh-incomprehensible.

Wanda hadn't been able to stop herself, either. Her destructive powers had nearly killed them all. Pietro remembered waking from a fitful sleep to see Father sitting on the foot of her bed, a hand on either side of his sleeping daughter’s little throat, a blank expression on his face.

Killing Wanda would have been a mercy, but Magnus had been unable to do terminate that experiment. And Pietro knew he himself wouldn't be able to, either. He couldn't kill Lance. Not to save Kitty, not to save hundreds of innocent students and staff. Not even to save himself.

"If you don't stop," Pietro explained softly, sliding his palm to Lance's chest, feeling for his fear-quickened heart. "Then we're all going to die. The whole school will break apart.”

Kitty was keening in fear, but she didn’t once attempt to leave them. She was clinging to them like she wanted to unzip their skins and climb inside; like they could protect her from what was happening. "Lance," she begged. "Lance, please..."

Lance groaned, back arching, chest heaving as a fresh wave of agony crested over him. His gurgle was less scream and more exhausted groan. How long had he been fighting this? It was possible his mutation was too strong for his brain, his body to handle.

 _Just like Wanda. He's_ just _like Wanda, and you're going to lose him the same way you lost her._

_No! Not again. _Never_ again! _

Pietro pulled Lance closer to himself; chest-to-chest. He brought their foreheads together. "Look at me, Alvers," he ordered, unconsciously taking on Father's commanding tone. "Look at me right now."

Lance turned to face him. His eyes were still white; blood leaked from his ducts and nostrils like tears. He was breaking his own brain, bursting it like a carnival popper. Soon it’d be pulsing from his ears in gray chunks.

Cupping Lance's cheek in hand, Pietro swiped a bloody trail from under his eye with his thumb, repeating, " _Look_ at me!"

Slowly, Lance's eyes rolled back into the correct position; the empty whiteness replaced by pure, blazing gold. The tremors around them lessened, but did not cease.

Pietro wound an arm around Lance's waist, hauling him as close as possible, squeezing him breathless. "You can stop this," he said quietly, his lips brushing the stubbled fuzz of Lance's cheek. "You're _Lancelot_ , the hero who could do anything."

The glowing gold in Lance's eyes dimmed in direct correlation to the quaking ruins of the school parking lot. Lance was breathing hard in little fits and gasps, and his heart was going crazy against Pietro's chest. But looking into Pietro’s eyes, he was finding a path to control. Finding his way back home.

"Yeah," Pietro encouraged, smiling softly, stroking his cheek. "Yeah, that's more like it. _There_ you are."

"I thought you didn't like heroes," Lance said, voice thick. His cracked lips, too, were wet with his own blood. The coppery stink of it flooded Pietro's nose. "You said they're too stupid and they all die young..."

Pietro, sighing in relief, pressed his forehead into Lance’s shoulder, squeezing him breathless. Soothing him like he might an animal. "Oh, they are," he agreed, his own voice wobbling with emotion. "They do. But I never said I didn't _like_ them."

Kitty dared peek up as the tremors concluded, looking over at Lance from the safety of Pietro's neck. "Lance?" she squeaked. She didn't dare to stop phasing, even now that the world had calmed. They were so far deep in the sunken hole of the parking lot's foundation that they could only see the clouds, the blue sky above from what felt like a million miles away. The three watched a tiny bird soar above.

Lance gave her a gentle, bloody smile. "Hey, Kitty. What... What just happened? How did we survive?"

"We'll explain everything later," Pietro cut them both off before they could get into it. He was still processing the fact that Lance was a mutant-- was an incredibly powerful, dangerous mutant-- himself. There was so, so much to think about. Everything had changed.

 _What a beautiful, magnificent creature_. For once, Pietro's inner-Father and he were in perfect agreement. He felt awed over what Lance was, what he could do, what it implied for the world, for the war, having something like Lance on their side…

No. Unacceptable. That was the key difference between Pietro and Father. It had to be, small and insignificant as it may seem. Father could not have Lance. He could not have Kitty. They were not things to be had, no matter what the cost of their freedom might be.

Pietro pushed Lance's scraggly hair from his face, wiping more blood off his skin with his sleeve. He moved an arm for Kitty to wriggle under and cradled her between them: three filthy, bloody, tangled mutants at the bottom of a pit where all the world was quiet. He thought he had never loved anyone more.

"Tro?" Lance said, drawing his eyes back to his face. "I have a secret for you. You want to hear it?"

Well. Better late than never. Pietro gave a begrudging smile. "Yeah, Lancelot. Tell me your secret."

Lance tucked a swirl of dust-coated hair behind Pietro's ear, then leaned in close to whisper, "I still dream about our doe sometimes."

жж

After emergency services airlifted them from the deep crevice in the ground, and had hauled the trio to the hospital for a checkup (Kitty received eighteen stitches in the back of her right arm after a six-inch shard of windshield glass was meticulously removed), the Prydes picked them up in a flurry of intense panic, having apparently exchanged terse words with Mary Hennessy and one of Lance's government employees in the hospital waiting room.

Lance, drugged and dopey, refused to let go of Kitty. In turn, Pietro refused to let go of Lance, which was how they wound up a pile of limbs on the Pryde's basement sofa, only half-watching the Princess Bride on VHS.

"You could have been _killed_!" Teresa must have cried a thousand times already. Pietro hadn't been surprised when she kept kissing her daughter's face, stroking her hair, but then she'd gone and kissed Lance and Pietro, too. "My poor babies... I've never been more scared in my life. That's two earthquakes in just a few months! Is this town even safe anymore?!"

Lance squirmed guiltily at that. Underneath their blankets, Pietro took his hand reassuringly.

Reporters kept coming to the front door, and Teresa and Carmen sternly turned them away. They were on the phone a lot, too, talking about fault lines and insurance and structural negligence.

"We need to tell them," Kitty said, looking directly into Pietro's eyes. "We should have told them years ago."

The idea clenched Pietro's guts with anxiety. Kitty, they might accept, but him? Lance?

"Can’t it wait?" he pleaded, physically and mentally exhausted. "Just til tomorrow, I promise.”

"I can't believe you two kept this from me for so long," Lance accused, looking cranky. "I thought I was going crazy sometimes, the things I noticed about you. Everything makes sense now." 

"Well, _I_ wanted to," Kitty said. "It was _Pietro_ who--"

"Oh, it's 'blame Pietro' day, huh?" the white-haired boy snarked. "I see how it is."

"Yep," they both agreed, but thankfully did not evict him from his cuddle-spot on the sofa.

"School's gonna be closed for forever while they rebuild all the broken stuff," Kitty remarked. "I can't believe nobody was killed."

"There were some close calls," Lance said, sounding miserable. "I don't know what I'm going to do the next time it happens. I wish… I wish _Dex_ were here.”

"You stopped it once," Pietro said, in a tone that refused to be argued with. "You'll get better at it. It's just like exercising any other muscle." What a meth-dealing asshole could have done about it, even if he _weren’t_ serving eight to ten at Deerfield County Prison, was beyond Pietro.

He had to acknowledge the possibility that this was out of his hands. Kitty's useful powers were one thing. A deadly, massively destructive gift like Lance's, though? He might haveto do something drastic. Might have to search for outside help... But he'd save that to think about tomorrow, too.

"There's a shortage of perfect breasts in the world," Lance said along with Cary Elwes’ character in the movie. "It'd be a pity to damage yours."

He leered at Kitty as he said it, making her laugh and smack him on the arm. "Of course you'd remember _that_ line."

"Hey, I remember other lines too." Putting on a dreamy Wesley voice, he took her hands and whispered, " _As you wish..._ "

Kitty turned pink so fast that it must have made her head spin. Pietro rolled his eyes.

When, hours later, the household had quieted for sleep, Pietro found his insomniac self wide awake, stroking Kitty's hair for comfort. His anxiety was a dull thing, always just under the surface, full of unidentifiable fears and suspicions.

Lance, as always, knew him better than he knew himself. His voice in the dark was as soft as his eyes. "You can't sleep, can you?"

Pietro injected a hint of humor into his voice. "Can I ever?"

"C'mere."

Pietro didn't deserve to 'c'mere', and he knew it. He'd abandoned his friends. It'd taken a minor catastrophe to bring them together again. He gently transferred Kitty's head off his lap and onto a pillow anyway before silently crossing to the other side of the couch. Lance took his waist, pulling him down beside him. Immediately, his anxiety began to ebb.

It was all Pietro could do not to bury himself in those strong arms, in that campfire scent. "Oh," he said, because he hadn't realized how much he _missed_ Lance until he had him again.

"Yeah," Lance agreed, sounding a little hesitant himself. " _Oh_.”

It was second nature to fold together, to nestle and tuck and fit their outer selves into a singular parcel, all hands and ankles and wrists.

"I'm pissed at you," Lance admitted, when they were settled. "Tro, I'm so _pissed_. You left me to deal with this alone. You've been lying to me for years. Can you even promise you're not going to do it again?!"

Pietro wished like anything that he could say yes. He could do nothing but stay silent.

"Tell me a secret?" he requested when the seconds ticked on. It wasn't enough. _He_ wasn't enough. He'd never been good enough for a hero.

Lance had always been good enough for the both of them, though. "You once asked why they don't buzz my hair at the boarding house," he said. "It's simple. They tried, I fought. I pulled the clippers from their hands and gouged my own palm up, screaming. I was never, ever gonna let anyone take anything from me again. Not even my hair."

The thought of it all-- the blood, the frantic adults, the small, stubborn Lance back before he gave those lovely smiles of his-- made all too much sense. Pietro released a deep, shuddery sigh. There was a soft place in his heart for that child, a place he thought might collapse and fill with blood if even the tiniest bit of pressure was placed on it.

"Ask _me_ for a secret now," he whispered, feeling Lance shift in the dark. Lance's smile was the softest thing in the world. He felt it in the breath hitting his cheek, the guitar-calloused fingers in his hair. Heard it in the laugh of his voice.

"Oh, dearest Pietro, won't you do me the honor of telling me a secret?"

Pietro gathered his courage, shifted on his elbows and, soft as falling petals, kissed Lance Alvers on the lips.

It was over as quickly as it'd happened, shocking as a jolt of electricity to the heart. "I hope that's okay," Pietro said nervously, feeling the bob of Lance's Adam's apple underneath his fingertips when the other boy swallowed hard, breath catching.

"Yeah," Lance agreed, voice cracking. He swallowed. "Yeah, Tro. You and I are... _You_ know."

"I know."

жж

Lance was roused from deepest sleep by a gentle knocking on the open basement door.

Teresa stood before them wearing a pink bathrobe over her pajamas and a puzzled frown on her face. When Pietro blearily sat up in Lance's hold she said, "There's a gentlemen asking for you at the door."

"A reporter?" Lance asked, wishing he had something better to wear than yesterday's rumpled, torn, and dirt-stained clothes.

Kitty stretched and yawned to wakefulness. "Can’t you tell him to come back at a decent hour?" she whined. “It’s barely six!”

"I did," Teresa explained. "But he says it's urgent. I don't think he's a reporter."

There was nothing for it. The three trudged upstairs to where Carmen was serving the man coffee. The unexpected guest was a strikingly bald, well-dressed man seated in a shiny, chrome wheelchair. He had a commanding presence that took the entire room and shook it by the hand.

Pietro stopped so suddenly that Lance turned to look at him, and was alarmed to see shock and distress playing wildly over the other teenager’s face. Instantly his protective instincts rose, and he moved to put his body between the strange man and his friends.

The man in the chair looked them all over: assessing, considering. Lance had the distinct impression that he was being appraised and found inadequate.

When his gaze locked on the third mutant in the room, though, he lost his air of superior impassibility. Surprised eyes travelled over Pietro's distinctive white hair and his blue eyes, sharp as knives. "Well my goodness, Pietro," he said in his smooth, deep voice, a single eyebrow raised in polite surprise. "This _does_ complicate things."

Pietro moved in a blur of motion too fast for Lance's eyes to follow. One moment, he was standing slightly behind him, the next, he was in the man's space, pushing his chair back against the table, looming imposingly over him. Teresa shrieked. Carmen jumped, spilling his coffee. The strange man smiled.

"Charles Xavier, if you think for a _second_ that I'm letting you have them, you can think again," Pietro snarled through tightly clenched teeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because the rating goes up from T to M, part 3 is in a different fic. Continue the story [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16920801/chapters/39754773) \- Mugs


	16. Bonus Content

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple deleted/missing scenes. (And a friendly reminder that part three is up and running [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16920801/chapters/39754773))  
> Kinda funny. I guess Pietro was originally scripted to be _more_ of an ass than he ended up being.

**An interaction between Dex and Pietro right before the Chicago trip, cut out because we wanted the scene where a high Dex gave Lance money and the Jeep to come later, instead.**

He knocked for a long, long time before there was any response. He might have stood out there forever, despite Lance's neighborhood not exactly being safe after dark- or ever.

Finally, _finally_ the window slid open, creaky and tooth-jarringly loud. Dex peered blearily down at him, looking pale and a little sick.

" _Fuck_ , kid," he complained. "Some of us are too hungover for this shit. What do you _want_?"

Pietro tried to speak, but his voice was dead inside his throat. He just looked up at Dex until the older boy sighed, scrubbed a hand through his staticky blond hair, and reached out the window. There was a new tattoo on his knuckles, one letter for each digit to spell  _Wolf._

Pietro took his hands and used the leverage to climb the wall and into his bedroom, nigh-identical to Lance's own with its mess and clusters of bunkbeds.

Dex, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer-briefs, turned away and reached onto a bunk for a half-empty pack of cigarettes, tapping one into his palm. He was more muscular than Pietro remembered, but the muscles in his arms looked tense and veiny, the bulging lines taking on a disturbing blue-black color. There was a sheen of cold sweat glossing his skin, sparkling his shoulders like dew.

 _He's on something_ , Pietro realized, wondering what it might be. The observation cut through all of his mental haze and he looked around the room, suddenly unsure if he wanted to be alone with the seventeen-year-old.

"Lance is out front," Dex informed him, fumbling with his matches. He dropped one, still burning, onto the floor. As the carpet began to smolder, he cursed and stomped his bare foot directly onto it until the flame extinguished with a hiss against his skin.

Officially creeped out, Pietro lightly stepped around him and out the door without a word of thanks.

жж

**A missing scene from before the prom (cut because it was meant to lead in to a subplot about Kitty being bullied for her friendship with the boys)  
**

“Well Angela _bought_ the tickets ages ago,” Pietro explained, huffing as though Lance were stupid and unable to keep up. “Since she’s the upperclassman. And I held onto them. I figured I’d just _keep_ hanging onto them after I dumped her, since that’s like seventy bucks right there.”

Lance blinked slowly, then reached to rub his tired face, breathing hard through his nose. “You used the tickets _another_ girl bought you to bring Kitty to prom.”

“Pretty much, yeah. Why?”

It was such a phenomenally, Pietro-patented shitty thing to do that Lance would have laughed, had Kitty not been caught in the crosshairs. As it was, he put on a stern voice. "Tell her you're sorry. Now."

"What? Why? What do you care about Angela? You can have her, man, she's a gymnast. Fun times..." Pietro shot Stacy a toothy grin when she made a disgruntled noise.

"Tro, would you shut up for five seconds and listen to yourself? Christ, and they think _I'm_ the gross one." Lance set his drink down and grabbed onto Pietro's head, shaking him a little, forcing eye-contact. "Get it through your head: You. Made. Her. Mad. Now she's going to take. It. Out. On. Kitty. And if Kitty gets hurt because of you, then _I._ Will. Kick. _Your._ Ass. Making sense now?"

Pietro scowled at him, pushing his hands off. "Pushy asshole. _Fine_ , if it means so much to you."

жж

  
**An alternate version of the "Pietro dates Kitty" plot, before we decided to go all out and have them ACTUALLY date.**

Then, because he knew without looking that Mary was still watching them through the shuttered window, he brought a knuckle under Kitty’s chin, turning her face up to his.

She frowned, uncomprehending, until he bent close, close like when they’d been younger; two kids touching foreheads in a dark backyard. He heard the tiny sound of her breath hitching before he touched his lips to hers.

She stood very still; a rabbit caught in the crosshairs, and he could have rolled his eyes. He wasn’t asking for the performance of a lifetime, but she could do to be a little less of a statue. It was just a kiss. What, didn’t she like him at all by now?

He traced encouraging, soft knuckles over her cheekbone, and very tentatively her hands came up to his arms, holding him. Her lips responded with just the slightest hint of pressure. _Finally_.

Sliding his free hand around her neck, he rubbed his thumb in a circle over where her pulse thrummed the strongest, unable to resist a smile when he felt it kick up a notch, fluttering like a bird’s wings. _There_ it was. Not so much of a statue now.

He caught her lower lip between his, tugging, and smiled at the sound she made, tasting blackberries as his tongue flicked hers. Her back jolted in surprise against his wandering palm. Maybe that was a step too far, because she broke the kiss, blinking hazy eyes at him.

“Do you need me to walk you home?” he asked.

“Why did you do that?” she said, at the same time. Even if her brain didn’t know the answer yet, her heart already did. Why else the note of suspicion?

 _Maybe I like you_ , was on the tip of his silver tongue. It wasn’t an outright lie- only a lie by misdirection. He liked her plenty, but that kiss had been far from an act of liking. _I could ask you the same thing_ would work just as well- after all; she hadn’t _had_ to kiss him back, though he’d sort of known she would.

“For the same reason I do everything,” he said, truthfully. He saw some of the haze leave her eyes, and the beginnings of a fresh hurt creeping in.

She pulled away from him, her hands sliding off his arms as she cleared her throat, looking at once small and a little lost. She blinked at him, like she’d just realized an old friend had actually been a stranger all along.

Pietro couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt a brush of guilt. It wasn’t an emotion he had much use for. He tamped it down. There was no use crying over spilled milk; what was done was done. One couldn’t take a kiss back.

“I think I’ll walk myself home,” she said, and it might have been impressively cutting had her sharp tone not been compromised by a slight waiver of her lip. She wasn’t crying yet. Maybe she wouldn’t at all. But if he were betting money…

“Okay. See you at school.”

If Mary was still watching, she might think it odd that he, the supposedly love-struck teen, did not try to touch Kitty again; to steal a second kiss at the gate, or to catch her hand, or a thousand other things. He supposed, just this once, the lie he lived would have to be an imperfect one.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Lance and his music [Fanart]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17352986) by [Nemhaine42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemhaine42/pseuds/Nemhaine42)




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